Rev Esp Cardiol
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Multicenter Study
[Utility of NT-proBNP for diagnosing heart failure in a heterogeneous population of patients with dyspnea. Spanish multicenter study].
Recent studies have shown that brain natriuretic peptide (BNP) and N-terminal proBNP (NT-proBNP) are useful in the diagnosis of heart failure in patients presenting with dyspnea. However, the cutoff values used with these markers vary according to patient characteristics and dyspnea severity. The aim of this study was to investigate the diagnostic accuracy of using the plasma NT-proBNP level for identifying heart failure in a heterogeneous population of patients with dyspnea. ⋯ The plasma NT-proBNP concentration provides an accurate means of diagnosing heart failure. However, the negative predictive value found in this study was somewhat lower than the values found in previous studies involving more homogeneous patient populations.