Cardiopulmonary Exercise Testing

Abstract

CPET is a non-invasive, functional assessment of cardio-respiratory performance. It has clinical applications in diagnosis, assessment of adequacy of treatment and pre-operative risk stratification of patients. CPET allows the calculation of a number of diagnostic and prognostic variables, and can identify pathophysiology not apparent at rest. CPET identifies patients who are less able to meet the increased oxygen delivery demands of major surgery. This can inform peri-operative planning including the use of pre-operative optimization, invasive monitoring and allocation of post-operative critical care resources.