Variations between laboratories when measuring the cardiac marker NT-proBNP

What is it about?

Heart failure is both common and on the rise throughout the world. The biomarker NT-proBNP is routinely measured in blood sample and is often used for monitoring of heart failure patients. There are several international medical decisions limits based on NT-proBNP for ruling out heart failure depending on the clinical context, but none of them take the different methods of measuring NT-proBNP into consideration. Data from the Swedish external quality assessment program for NT-proBNP from Equalis during 2011-2021 were studied and showed that the introduction of new methods in 2017 have caused a declining agreement between manufacturers when measuring NT-proBNP levels in the same blood sample. The limited standardization between NT-proBNP methods might lead to different treatment of patients with suspected heart failure, since the measured NT-proBNP levels are method-dependent while the medical guidelines for ruling out heart failure are not. This highlights the need for a better standardisation of methods for NT-proBNP determination.

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Photo by Testalize.me on Unsplash

Photo by Testalize.me on Unsplash

Why is it important?

It is important since your treatment regarding suspected heart failure might be different depending on which laboratory that analyses your blood sample for NT-proBNP.