Response of cardiac endocrine function to surgery stress is age dependent in neonates and children with congenital heart defects: consequences in diagnostic and prognostic accuracy of brain natriuretic peptide measurement

What Was Tested

This observational study looks at BNP (Nesiritide).

The aim of this study was to evaluate the diagnostic and prognostic accuracy of brain natriuretic peptide assay in neonates and children undergoing surgery for congenital heart disease.

Who Took Part

The study group was 336 children.

PubMed indexes the participants as infants, young children and children, both men and women.

The researchers enrolled 336 consecutive children (median age, 6 mo [range, 0-37 mo]) undergoing cardiac surgery (87 neonates; age, 7 d [5-12]; median, 25th-75th percentile; 24 infants and children; age, 11 mo [4-60]) and 436 healthy controls.

How the Study Was Run

Brain natriuretic peptide was measured preoperatively, on every postoperative day in the ICU, and at discharge.

Intubation time was the primary outcome.

What Was Measured

PubMed files the paper under topics including Age Factors, Area Under Curve, Biomarkers, Cardiac Surgical Procedures, Cardiopulmonary Bypass, Case-Control Studies and Echocardiography.

What This Means in Plain Language

This is an observational study of BNP (Nesiritide) in 336 children.

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

Results are reported in around 8 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2013 (Pediatric critical care medicine : a journal of the Society of Critical Care Medicine and the World Federation of Pediatric Intensive and Critical Care Societies), a journal based in United States.

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