Modern laboratory diagnosis of chronic heart failure

Chronic heart failure (CHF) is a clinical syndrome manifested by a multitude of symptoms, based on a decrease in contractile (pumping) function of the heart. The prevalence of CHF tends to increase and often causes hospitalisation and disability of patients, especially among the elderly. The main causes of heart failure are hypertension and coronary artery disease.  The most typical signs of CHF are dyspnoea that increases with exertion, swelling of the legs that increases in the evening, palpitations (tachycardia), general weakness and bluish colouring of the fingertips, nose and ears (cyanosis).

Nowadays, doctors and their patients have the opportunity to diagnose heart failure early using NT-proBNP (brain natriuretic peptide) blood tests. This makes it possible to start early treatment of this disease and prevent its progression, which can ultimately improve the quality of life of patients.

 In people with left ventricular dysfunction (reduced contractility), NT-proBNP levels in the blood can rise long before there are clear clinical signs of heart failure.

One of the symptoms of chronic heart failure may be dyspnoea (snoring) and night apnoea syndrome (short-term respiratory arrest in sleep). Elevation of NT-pro-BNP levels in these cases allows detecting chronic heart failure in such patients, providing timely treatment and ensuring a favourable outcome.

This test also allows differentiating dyspnoea caused by cardiac and pulmonary insufficiency on the background of such diseases as bronchial asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (chronic obstructive bronchitis). In case of pulmonary pathology NT-proBNP remains normal.

The European Society of Cardiology recommends using this test as an exclusion test, as it has a high negative predictive value (normal NT-proBNP levels indicate the absence of disease). It is also used as a predictor (prognostic criterion) of high mortality in patients with heart failure, coronary artery disease and risk of myocardial infarction.

In the OLYMP СDL branches, NT-proBNP testing is performed by the highly sensitive electrochemiluminescence (ECHL) method on automatic analysers manufactured in Europe by Roche Diagnostics (Germany). This allows to obtain the most accurate and reliable results of this test in a short period of time.

Patients can be tested for NT-proBNP in any treatment room of OLYMP СDL in all cities listed in the contacts section.

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