Can Right Chest

It has been suggested that a combination of left and right chest leads can improve the sensitivity of exercise-testing for the detection of coronary artery disease, especially in patients with single vessel coronary artery stenosis. We studied 94 patients with abnormal scintigraphic findings, exclusively in the inferior myocardial wall, who had been referred for coronary angiography. The sensitivity of the 12-lead exercisetesting was significantly increased by the additional use of three right chest leads. Furthermore, 48 out of the 49 patients with normal coronary arteries as defined by coronary angiography, had negative results during exercise-testing using the right chest leads. Exercise electrocardiography with the use of right chest leads could be an affordable, widely available and safe method, for the detection of false positive scintigraphic findings in individuals with abnormal findings, exclusively in the inferior myocardial wall. Based on these preliminary results, we could suggest that the electrocardiographic data derived from the right chest leads during exercise-testing should be taken into account when individuals with the aforementioned scintigraphic findings are considered for further evaluation with coronary angiography. However, further prospective studies are needed to validate our hypothesis.