People who come to the E.R. complaining of chest pain often get a stress test to determine if they likely have heart disease. But scientist's reporting in the 'Archives of Internal Medicine' found most of the time, people had a negative result on that test but rarely received treatment or suffered a heart attack later on.
They say the results showed that doctors do stress testing too often. They also found stress testing does not lower the chances of having a heart attack within the next 30 days.
As a result, they add there is no absolute way to routinely perform this test prior to discharge.
