▶ A webinar on the topic of 'Clinical Utility of NT-proBNP Cardia Biomarker in Diagnosis' was held on the 1st of December

▶ Part two in the webinar series is planned for the 20th of December on the topic of 'Point-of-Care NT-proBNP in Diagnosis and Management of Cardiac Disease'

The speaker of this webinar, Dr. Geri Lake-Bakaar, introduced Cardiac Biomarkers (NT-proBNP) which are greatly useful in the diagnosis of heart disease and evaluate patients' prognosis in dogs and cats.

Dr. Geri Lake-Bakaar is an alumnus of Harvard and Cornell University and in 2013, she became a Board-certified veterinary specialist in Cardiology (DACVIM, Cardiology) from UC Davis.

NT-proBNP can be used to screen for Occult Cardiomyopathy which doesn't have any clinical symptoms and especially be useful as a preanesthetic test or when the patient displays heart murmurs. Further, it can also be useful in determining whether the respiratory symptoms of the patient are caused by congestive heart failure or respiratory diseases.

Increased levels of NT-proBNP in patients with heart disease are associated with impending heart failure, with a high probability of progressing to congestive heart failure in dogs above 1,500 pmol/L.

In humans, NT-proBNP markers are also utilized clinically, and when the value decreases by more than 30%, the clinical prognosis can be determined to be good. On the other hand, when there is no change in the value or if there is an increase, it can be considered as an indicator of bad prognosis.

However, the increased NT-proBNP levels could be due to heart failure, ischemia, and arrhythmia as well, so caution was advised in interpreting the results.

In the case of commercially available qualitative measurement kits for feline NT-proBNP, while they can be used to exclude heart disease from the diagnostic differentials, it was emphasized that the results of quantitative tests should be used together with the qualitative results because false positives are common in quantitative tests.

On the other hand, the NT-proBNP kit from BIONOTE Inc., which provides accurate quantitative results on-site in just a couple of minutes using the Vcheck equipment, was mentioned as a clinically useful method for diagnosis by Dr. Lake-Bakaar. 

On Wednesday the 20th of December, Dr. Lake-Bakaar will hold the second part of the cardiac biomarker webinar series, specifically on the topic of 'Point-of-Care NT-proBNP in Diagnosis and Management of Cardiac Disease'. In this webinar, she will provide more detailed information on how NT-proBNP levels are useful in monitoring treatment plans in hospitalized patients of patients receiving outpatient treatments.

The webinar is free for anyone to join through the QR code and will start at 10 am Korean Standard Time (KST).