Plasma BNP level as marker for early detection of heart failure in primary hypertensive patients

Heart failure is chiefly the end stage of primary hypertension and a major public health problem in Malaysia. The aim of this work is to investigate the level of BNP that may discriminate between primary hypertension patients without heart failure and primary hypertensive patients with heart failure. This study was conducted on 60 hypertensive patients without any clinical symptoms of heart failure referred for echocardiography to evaluate the ventricular function. Patients with metabolic diseases and terminal diseases were excluded from the study. The BNP levels were assessed using the Triage Meter from Biosite Diagnostics. Results showed that BNP level display a negative correlation with ejection fraction (Pearson correlation test). The significant result (paired t test, p < 0.05) proves that both predictors are very important and relates to each other. Low ejection fraction is significantly marked with raised BNP level suggesting that BNP may play potential role as screening tool for early detection of heart failure in primary hypertensive patients.