Abstract:Objective To explore the effect of coronary heart disease (CHD) on cardiac function of patients in resting state and after exercises and evaluate the significance of cardiopulmonary exercise test (CPET) in patients with CHD. Methods In this study 243 patients who underwent CPET were studied and divided into two groups according to coronary angiogram, i.e. a CHD group (n = 174) and a control group (n = 69). Clinical manifestations, combined diseases, CHD situations, ultrasonic cardiogram and CPET data of the patients were collected and analyzed. Results The left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) had no significant difference between the CHD group and the control group (P > 0.05). The peak oxygen consumption (VO2peak) in the CHD group was lower than that in the control group (P < 0.05). The VO2peak% in the CHD group was declined and significant lower than that in the control group (P < 0.05). The differences still existed after controlling the confounding effects of age, gender, smoking, hypertension, diabetes mellitus via convariance analysis. Conclusions The damage of CHD to cardiac reserve function after exercise is earlier than that to LVEF in resting condition. CPET should be performed to evaluate the cardiac reserve function in the patients with coronary heart disease.