Research says heart test is highly inaccurate

AN APPROVED exercise test for heart patients is “highly inaccurate” and could be causing thousands of patients to have unnecessary surgery, say researchers.

Needless open heart operations performed because of the test may be costing the NHS £60m a year, it is claimed.

Exercise testing has been used to assess people with the heart valve condition aortic stenosis (AS) since 2012.

Patients are asked to pedal a stationary bike to see if they require surgery to correct the problem, caused by a narrowing of the aortic valve opening.

But a study published in the European Heart Journal shows that the test only has a 60 per cent accuracy rate, suggesting many patients are sent for surgery prematurely. Each year in the UK about 10,000 aortic valve replacements are carried out at a cost of up to £15,000 per procedure.

According to the new findings, roughly 40 per cent of these operations may be unnecessary.

Professor Gerry McCann, from the University of Leicester’s Department of Cardiovascular Sciences, who led the study of 174 patients, said: “There is no doubt that valve replacement therapy is highly effective for patients with symptoms, however there are risks involved. It’s a major operation and there’s a one per cent chance of people dying or having a stroke during or after. There’s also the chance they could develop an infection.

“It can often take six months to recover, but if they survive they tend to do very well afterwards. However, if we know a patient has AS and no symptoms and we do nothing, there’s also a one per cent chance they will die, so there’s a fine line between whether we should intervene or not. Our findings showed that this exercise test was highly inaccurate.”