The members of the European Respiratory Society Task Force on Exercise Testing in Clinical Practice have read with interest the letter from J.E. Cotes and J.W. Reed and are of the opinion that any response to the points raised therein should be placed in the context of the purpose of a recently published Task Force 1. As stated in the introduction of this Task Force 1: “The purpose of this document is to present recommendations on the clinical use of exercise testing in patients with cardiopulmonary disease, with particular emphasis on the evidence base for functional evaluation, prognosis and assessment of interventions. While the scope of the document is broad, consideration will focus only on those indices which have demonstrable predictive power”. The key phrase here is “evidence base”, which represents a clear departure from the objectives of the 1997 Task Force 2. In recent years, there has been an accumulating body of evidence across a broad range of chronic lung and heart diseases ( e.g. chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), interstitial lung disease (ILD), pulmonary vascular disease and chronic heart failure (CHF)) from studies using cycle ergometer protocols and field tests. It is upon this collective evidence base that the Task Force has formulated its recommendations for exercise testing in clinical practice.
Furthermore, the Task Force was …
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