BNP testing is most valuable for diagnosing dyspneic patients without a clear-cut diagnosis rather than screening for left ventricular systolic dysfunction.
I n patients with heart failure, the promise that biomarkers may provide has been extensively explored. Although brain natriuretic peptide (BNP) had been proposed as a potential tool for screening patients with left ventricular systolic dysfunction, subsequent studies suggested that the biomarker had little benefit in this context. 1 Indeed, the utility of BNP is perhaps most valuable when used in the more restricted and specific diagnostic context of the dyspneic patient without a clear-cut diagnosis. 4] Prior studies evaluating the prognostic utility of biomarkers in heart failure were often limited in this context.
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Lee et al. (2009) studied this question.
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