B-type natriuretic peptide testing, clinical outcomes, and health services use in emergency department patients with dyspnea: a randomized trial

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of BNP (Nesiritide), published as a randomized controlled trial.

To assess whether BNP testing alters clinical outcomes and health services use of acutely dyspneic patients.

Why It Was Studied

B-type natriuretic peptide (BNP) is used to diagnose heart failure, but the effects of using the test on all dyspneic patients is uncertain.

Most patients were very short of breath and required hospitalization; the findings might not apply for evaluating patients with milder degrees of breathlessness.

Who Took Part

The study group was 612 patients.

The age groups tagged for this paper are adults, middle-aged adults, older adults and people over 80, both men and women.

Patients were assigned to a treatment group through randomized numbers in a sealed envelope.

Patients were blinded to the intervention, but clinicians and those who assessed trial outcomes were not.

How the Study Was Run

The researchers set it up as a randomized and single-blind study.

The patients were allocated by chance, so the BNP (Nesiritide) group and the comparison group should start out alike.

In this single-blind BNP (Nesiritide) study one party knew the assignments and the other did not.

2 Australian teaching hospital emergency departments.

612 consecutive patients who presented with acute severe dyspnea from August 2005 to March 2007.

BNP testing (n = 306) or no testing (n = 306).

Admission rates, length of stay, and emergency department medications (primary outcomes); mortality and readmission rates (secondary outcomes).

What Was Measured

B-type natriuretic peptide (BNP) is used to diagnose heart failure, but the effects of using the test on all dyspneic patients is uncertain.

Most patients were very short of breath and required hospitalization; the findings might not apply for evaluating patients with milder degrees of breathlessness.

PubMed files the paper under topics including Australia, Dyspnea, Emergency Service, Hospital, Heart Failure, Hospitals, University, Length of Stay and Natriuretic Peptide, Brain.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized and single-blind study of BNP (Nesiritide) in 612 patients.

With several hundred people or more, it is a fairly large study for this kind of research.

Its findings take up roughly 5 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2009 (Annals of internal medicine), a journal based in United States.

More context: the BNP (Nesiritide) compound page, all human trials.