EDITORIALS
Natriuretic peptides or psychometric tests? Prognostic markers in congestive heart failure
1 Department of Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy, University of Göttingen, Germany
2 Department of Cardiology, University Hospital of Graz, Austria
Correspondence to:
Professor Christoph Herrmann-Lingen, Department of Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy, University of Göttingen, von-Siebold-Str. 5, Göttingen, D-37099, Germany; cherrma@gwdg.de
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
Congestive heart failure (CHF) is a highly prevalent condition and its impact will increase further in the future. Due to its poor prognosis, heart failure has been named a "malignant disease". Several prognostic factors have been identified in CHF patients. Comprehensive prognostic scores have been based on clinical and laboratory parameters such as age, gender, comorbidity, ejection fraction, exercise capacity or haemoglobin concentrations.1 These scores have, however, often ignored the prognostic potential of neuroendocrine markers in CHF. B-type natriuretic peptides seem to be the most powerful neuroendocrine markers and their routine application has found increasing support. Longitudinal studies have demonstrated independent statistical effects of BNP and NT-pro-BNP on mortality rates. In a systematic review, Doust et al2 found that in 23 of 35 multivariable analyses CHF outcomes were predicted by B-type natriuretic peptides at higher significance levels than by any other risk marker. In nine of these analyses, BNP or
CiteULike 
Complore 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us 
Digg 
Reddit 
Technorati What's this?
Relevant Article
- Clinical and prognostic implications of self-rating depression scales and plasma B-type natriuretic peptide in hospitalised patients with chronic heart failure
- J T Parissis, M Nikolaou, D Farmakis, V Bistola, I A Paraskevaidis, S Adamopoulos, G Filippatos, and D T Kremastinos
Heart 2008 94: 585-589.[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
- Full Text
- Full Text (PDF)
- Submit a response
- Alert me when this article is cited
- Alert me when eLetters are posted
- Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
- Email this link to a friend
- Similar articles in this journal
- Similar articles in PubMed
- Add article to my folders
- Download to citation manager
- Request Permissions
Citing Articles
Google Scholar
PubMed
Topic Collections
Bookmark with
Register for free content
The full back archive is now available for all BMJ Journals. Institutional subscribers may access the entire archive as part of their subscription. Personal subscribers will also have access to all content when logged in. Non-subscribers who register have free access to all articles published before 2006 right back to volume 1 issue 1. Register here to access the free archive of all BMJ Journals.
Don't forget to sign up for content alerts so you keep up to date with all the articles as they are published.
