Field of medicine: Cardiology

Format: Softcover book.

Audience: Primary care physicians, internal medicine specialists, and family practice physicians interested in stress testing.

Purpose: To describe stress testing so that a physician can perform it.

Content: This book, designed to fit into the pocket of a lab coat, is divided into 21 chapters. The initial chapters cover the preparation of the patient and the indications, contraindications, and protocols for electrocardiographic testing. Several chapters describe stress testing done using various imaging techniques. An important chapter discusses the selection of the mode of stress testing. The text allows a good comparison of imaging techniques with a variety of stress tests, including treadmill testing, bicycle exercise, and use of various drugs. The use of Bayes' theorem in stress testing is discussed. Tables outline pertinent points, and the many electrographic illustrations, which are necessarily small because of the book's size, are adequate and clear. The use of the physical examination during exercise is discussed briefly.

Highlights: The important aspect of this book is its size: It fits into a pocket and yet contains a wealth of information. It is well indexed and includes 75 references for additional reading.

Limitations: Although the book succeeds as a manual for stress testing, some important information is not included. Although treadmill scores, as developed by Duke University, are mentioned, the value of integrating maximum heart rate, ST-segment depression and duration of exercise with or without chest pain is not discussed.

Context: Many texts on stress testing and imaging techniques are available, such as Marwick's Cardiac Stress Testing and Imaging (Churchill Livingstone, 1996) and Froelicher, Myers, Follansbee, and Labovitz's Exercise and the Heart (Mosby, 1993). The value of this book is that it is pocket-sized but still contains easily found tables of information, focused summaries at the end of each chapter, and easy-to-read examples of electrocardiograms.

Reviewer: John F. Moran, MD, Loyola University Medical Center, Maywood, Illinois.