• Korean Journal of Clinical Laboratory Science
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• v.37 no.2
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• pp.88-95
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• 2005

Even though the echocardiograph has been recognized as the method of choice among various diagnostic tools to detect congestive heart failure (CHF), there were some limitations in relation to the consumption of time, labor and process. We analyzed results of N-terminal probrain-type natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP) and various parameters of the echocardiographic findings to clarify the diagnostic usefulness of NT-proBNP in detecting patients with CHF. We analyzed the sera from total of 242 cases from in-patients and out-patients, which were requested from the cardiovascular section of department of Internal Medicine at Chungnam National University Hospital from March 2003 to May 2004. The procedures were performed in order as shown below; sampling, NT-proBNP analysis, data acquisition and data analysis. All data including personal information and echocardiographic findings ware acquired by medical record review. When classifying the study population into six groups according to the degree of left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF), the serum level of NT-proBNP was higher in the group with 51-60% of LVEF (P=0.023). There were low correlation between the serum level of NT-proBNP and various parameters of the echocardiographic findings with LVESD (r=0.1513), LVEDD (r=0.0831), LVEF (r=0.2035), IVST (r=0.03) and LVPWT (r=0.0728), respectively. When comparing NT-proBNP with atrial and/or ventricular enlargement, the patient group with both left atrial and left ventricular enlargement (p=0.186) or only left atrial (p=0.105) or only left ventricular enlargement (p=0.256) showed higher level of NT-proBNP without statistical significance than patient group with no enlargement. Searching the optimal cutoff of the serum level of NT-proBNP, the sensitivity (98.9%) and the specificity (100%) was highest at the cutoff of 300 pg/mL than any other cutoffs. These findings suggested that the analysis of NT-proBNP in serum might detect the patients with CHF earlier than with the echocardiograph, especially in patients with asymptomatic or mild symptomatic CHF. In conclusion, NT-proBNP test was proved to be clinically useful to diagnose CHF patients.