Dobutamine stress echocardiography (DSE) and exercise stress echocardiography (ESE) are widely used for diagnosis of coronary artery disease. Each of these methods has limitations: secondary effects of Dobutamine, poor imaging quality, difficulty in attaining the maximal heart rate. The authors evaluated a test associating pedalling exercise at a constant low load (30-60 watts) with Dobutamine infusion (10-20-30-40 j/Kg/min +/- Atropine) (DES + E) in 42 patients referred for suspected coronary artery disease. All patients underwent coronary angiography on Day 1. There was significant coronary disease (> 50% stenosis) in 19 of the 42 patients. Sensitivity, specificity, negative predictive value, positive predictive value and overall diagnosis value were respectively 84, 87, 84, 87 and 86%. In the first 20 patients, the DES + E was compared directly with DES: There was only one undesirable side effect (hypertension) with DES + E compared with 5 with DES alone. The target heart rate was attained with lower doses of Dobutamine with DES + E (32.35 vs 39.42 j/Kg/min, p = 0.05). DES + E therefore seems to be a promising technique which is better tolerated than DES alone with very satisfactory diagnostic performances. However, these results require further confirmation in larger numbers of patients.