The inclusion of N-terminal pro-brain natriuretic peptide in a sensitive screening strategy for systemic sclerosis-related pulmonary arterial hypertension: A cohort study

V Thakkar; W Stevens; D Prior; P Youssef; D Liew; E Gabbay; J Roddy; JG Walker; J Zochling; J Sahhar; P Nash; S Lester; M Rischmueller; SM Proudman; M Nikpour

Journal article

The inclusion of N-terminal pro-brain natriuretic peptide in a sensitive screening strategy for systemic sclerosis-related pulmonary arterial hypertension: A cohort study

V Thakkar, W Stevens, D Prior, P Youssef, D Liew, E Gabbay, J Roddy, JG Walker, J Zochling, J Sahhar, P Nash, S Lester, M Rischmueller, SM Proudman, M Nikpour

Arthritis Research and Therapy | Published : 2013

DOI: 10.1186/ar4383

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Abstract

Introduction: Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is a major cause of mortality in systemic sclerosis (SSc). Screening guidelines for PAH recommend multiple investigations, including annual echocardiography, which together have low specificity and may not be cost-effective. We sought to evaluate the predictive accuracy of serum N-terminal pro-brain natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP) in combination with pulmonary function tests (PFT) ('proposed' algorithm) in a screening algorithm for SSc-PAH.Methods: We evaluated our proposed algorithm (PFT with NT-proBNP) on 49 consecutive SSc patients with suspected pulmonary hypertension undergoing right heart catherisation (RHC). The predictive accuracy o..

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University of Melbourne Researchers

Wendy Stevens Author

David Prior Author

Mandana Nikpour Author

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I am a rheumatologist treating systemic sclerosis, a life threatening illness. A serious complication is high blood pressure in the lungs, o..

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Funding Acknowledgements

We wish to thank the following people for assistance with sample preparation and data collection: Edmund Lau, Tamera Corte, Alison Batty, Kerry Cooper, Kathleen Elford, Dot Fowler, Barbara Gemmell, Trish Lewis, Helen Marsden, Leah McWilliams and Bev Wilson. We wish to thanks the patients who participated in this study and St Vincent's Hospital Melbourne IT department for their expert advice and continued support of the Australian Scleroderma Cohort Study and Database. Dr Thakkar was funded by a National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia Scholarship (APP 1038612) and The Australian Scleroderma Interest Group Clinical Research Fellowship. Dr Nikpour holds a David Bickart Clinician Research Fellowship from the University of Melbourne Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences. Other sources of funding include Scleroderma Australia, Arthritis Australia, St Vincent's Research Endowment Foundation, Pfizer (including a Pfizer CardioVascular Lipid research grant), Actelion Australia, Bayer, CSL Biotherapies and GlaxoSmithKline Australia.