Transcript of the above video:
I remember receiving a telephone call about a young farmer who had been seeing his doctor for a couple of months, with increasing shortness of breath on exertion – and he’d been diagnosed as asthma. Asthma ran in the family – had a sister with asthma.There was a little bit of wheezing at times, but he would, clearly wasn’t getting any better. He had done some tests and NT-proBNP was ticked. I think as a kind of second thought.
It came back clearly at an elevated level for a man of 48 years, which he was. And having heard that level, I knew that in young people, especially those under 50 years or so, an elevated NT-proBNP is a very, very high marker, gives very high likelihood of heart failure being present. It’s actually at that age, not only a good rule-out test, but a very good rule-in test. I was quite confident he had heart failure, and had him sent in and indeed, he was developing a cardiomyopathy which had not been recognised. And clearly it was caught and treated and the subsequently done very well. And I think that test probably saved him from deteriorating into frank severe decompensation with pulmonary edema coming in desperately ill on one occasion.
