Blood Test Helps Patients with Risk of Heart Disease

A simple screening blood test and management program can be effective in preventing heart failure for at-risk patients.

Blood levels of B-type natriuretic peptide (BNP), a hormone that indicates how well the heart is functioning and elevated BNP levels can indicate established heart failure.

Cardiologists at St. Vincent's University Hospital (Dublin, Ireland) recruited 1,374 patients from 39 family practices as part of a five-year study. The participants were asymptomatic patients over 40 years of age with risk factors for heart failure and randomized into an intervention and a control group. Patients in the intervention group were screened for blood levels of BNP, at least annually and all patients were screened for cardiovascular risk factors.

Of the patients in the intervention group, 41.6% showed elevated BNP levels at some point during the study. These patients received an echocardiogram and continued care under both their physicians and a specialist cardiology service. In addition to showing lower rates of the primary endpoint, intervention patients also had lower rates of emergency hospitalization for major cardiovascular events at 22.3 per 1,000 patient years compared to 40.4 per 1,000 patient years in the control group. The investigators found that a significantly lower number of patients in the intervention group than in the control group met the primary endpoint of new onset heart failure requiring hospitalization or left ventricular dysfunction.

Kenneth McDonald, MD, director of the Heart Failure Unit at St. Vincent's and a senior author of the study, said "Our study shows that a simple blood test screening, followed by targeted care of people at heightened risk of heart failure, can result in a dramatic reduction in cardiovascular events. This is good news, since heart failure has become a major public health problem and middle-aged adults today have a 20% to 30% lifetime risk of developing heart failure." The study was presented at the American College of Cardiology's 62nd Annual Scientific Session held March 9–11, 2013, in San Francisco (CA, USA).

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