The stress test assesses your heart’s ability to respond to stress. While you pedal a bicycle against gradually increasing resistance, your blood pressure, heart rate and electrocardiogram are recorded.

The purpose of the stress test is to assess :

• If your heart does not lack oxygen supply during exercise and thus exclude coronary insufficiency.
• The absence of arrhythmia during exercise
• Your physical capacity.

Conduct of the examination :

A nurse will place 10 electrodes on your chest. For men, it is sometimes necessary to partially shave the chest and back for good contact with the electrodes. The blood pressure and electrocardiogram are recorded during and after your effort. Gradually, the effort will become more and more difficult. The nurse will let you cycle until the fatigue threshold is reached. It is important to make the effort as long as possible in order to be able to assess your maximum effort capacity as well as possible and to have the best chance of detecting an abnormality in the blood flow to your heart on the electrocardiogram. The test takes between 15 and 20 minutes.