Blood Pressure Analysis during Treadmill Stress Testing

Abstract

A problem has been identified in that the treadmill stress test is far too inaccurate a test to be used in the diagnosis of coronary heart disease without some method to increase its reliability. An extensive study has been performed concerning exercise work physiology and the response of the body to stress. A theory has been postulated as to the blood pressure response to an increase in heart rate in diseased hearts as opposed to healthy hearts. A method has been proposed to statistically discriminate between patients who are positive and negative for coronary heart disease based solely on blood pressure and heart rate. This method utilizes multivariate discriminant analysis to form discriminant functions for the classification of patients with unknown memberships. Results show that a difference exists in the relationship between systolic blood pressure and heart rate at increased levels of stress for normal patients, compared to those with coronary heart disease.