Key Takeaways
- Natriuretic peptides help the ED doctors in more efficient and fast diagnosis of Heart Failure (reducing uncertainty) which enables them to initiate appropriate treatment quickly to improve outcomes
Transcript of the above video:
The problem for the emergency department doctors is that it’s not the only cause of being short to breath. You can become short of breath because your asthma has deteriorated, or you have early pneumonia, you may have anxiety states. There are any number of reasons for feeling short of breath.
It’s quite important to decide whether it’s heart failure or not as fast as possible, because delay in making that diagnosis can result in poor outcomes for the patient. About half of breathless cases or half of heart failure cases rather, are a source of great uncertainty. The emergency physician may look at them and consider that heart failure as a possibility, but they are quite uncertain about half the time.
Now once people have become familiar with what a cardiac peptide test meant and how it related to the condition of your heart, then that uncertainty shrank well down to about 15% of cases. Which means that a lot of uncertainty is taken away, the diagnosis can be made more efficiently. People get started on treatment faster, outcomes tend to pick up.