CPET Made Simple - A Practical Guide to Cardiopulmonary Exercise Testing

From the book's Introduction

Cardiopulmonary exercise testing (CPET) has come a long way from its clinical introduction in the 1980s. It is a dynamic and integrative test that can assess cardiovascular, respiratory, skeletal muscular and metabolic responses to increasing exercise intensity. Such an investigation can be incredibly useful in the holistic assessment of a patient’s functional status. It is no surprise then that this investigation is being increasingly used by cardiologists, respiratory physicians, exercise physicians, peri-operative physicians, anaesthetists, and physiologists for such diverse purposes as:

• Assessment of exercise capacity (and response to training, medication, etc.)

• Assessment of peri-operative risk

• Investigation, assessment, and prognostication in cardiac or

respiratory disease

• Evaluation of endurance and performance in elite athletes.