Coronary flow reserve and brachial artery reactivity in patients with chest pain and "false positive" exercise-induced ST-segment depression

Exercise stress testing with 12-lead electrocardiographic (ECG) monitoring remains the cornerstone for the diagnosis of coronary artery disease even in the present cardiac imaging era. nevertheless, the specificity of exercise-induced ST-segment depression is clearly suboptimal (i.e., it frequently occurs with angiographically normal coronary arteries). This study was done to evaluate coronary flow reserve ratio and brachial artery flow-mediated dilation by echocardiographic techniques in patients with normal coronary arteries and "false positive" exercise ECG findings.