The limited efficacy of exercise radionuclide ventriculography in assessing prognosis of women with coronary artery disease

Increasing numbers of women are undergoing stress testing for coronary artery disease evaluation. Limited study is available as to its efficacy in women. Four hundred nineteen patients with coronary artery disease (74 women and 345 men) referred for exercise radionuclide ventriculography between 1979 and 1986 were evaluated in a prospective cohort evaluation with 5-year follow-up. Exercise radionuclide ventriculographic variables were analyzed and compared between women and men. The prognostic efficacy of exercise radionuclide ventriculograpny was assessed separately for women and men among patients with coronary artery disease by Kaplan-Meier cumulative survival curves, univariate Cox regression analyses, and hierarchical stepwise Cox regression analyses. Overall, women demonstrated higher resting and peak left ventricular ejection fraction response to exercise than men. Ninety-six of 419 patients (23%) had cardiac events at 5-year follow-up. Although left ventricular response to exercise conveyed prognostic information in the combined and male populations (multivariate hierarchical analyses chi-square 11, p = 0.001 for delta left ventricular ejection fraction and chi-square 10, p = 0.002 for worsening exercise wall motion score), these variables were not found to be prognostically useful in women. Women with coronary artery disease demonstrated a worsened functional status, evidenced by greater compromise of exercise capacity, despite having less extensive anatomic disease than their male counterparts. We conclude that sex-related differences in left ventricular response to exercise limit the prognostic utility of exercise ventriculography in women with coronary artery disease.