What factors should be considered when deciding to add imaging to a patient's care?
When deciding to add imaging to a patient's care, the potential risks and benefits should be carefully considered in concert with the pre-test likelihood. In addition, a variety of clinical factors should be taken into account, such as the patient's ability to exercise, body habitus, cardiac medication use, and ECG interpretability. Other factors that should be taken into consideration include local availability of specific tests, local expertise in test performance and interpretation, the presence of multiple diagnostic or prognostic questions better addressed by one form of testing over another, and the existence of prior test results (especially when prior images are available for comparison).