(Elsevier, 2007) Cuthbertson, Brian; Amiri, Amir R.; Croal, Bernard L.; Rajagopalan, Sriram; Brittenden, Julie; Hillis, Graham S.; University of Aberdeen, School of Medicine & Dentistry, Division of Applied Health Sciences; University of Aberdeen, School of Medicine & Dentistry, Division of Applied Medicine
We assessed the ability of pre-operative B-type natriuretic peptide (BNP) levels to predict medium-term mortality in patients undergoing major noncardiac surgery. During a median 654 days follow-up 33 patients from a total cohort of 204 patients (16%) died. The optimal cut-off in this cohort, determined using a receiver operating characteristic curve, was >35pg.mL-1. This was associated with a 3.47-fold increase in the hazard of death (p=0.001) and had a sensitivity of 70% and a specificity of 68% for this outcome. These findings extend recent work demonstrating that BNP levels obtained before major noncardiac surgery can be used to predict peri-operative morbidity, and indicate that they also forecast medium-term mortality.
