• Sari Hämäläinen, Auni Juutilainen, Taru Kuittinen, Tapio Nousiainen, Irma Matinlauri, Kari Pulkki, Irma Koivula, and Esa Jantunen.
• Department of Medicine, Kuopio University Hospital, Kuopio, Finland. sari.hamalainen@kuh.fi
• Leuk. Lymphoma. 2010 Jun 1;51(6):1040-6.

AbstractSerum amino-terminal pro-brain natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP) is considered as a prognostic marker in patients with severe sepsis or septic shock, but no data are available on NT-proBNP kinetics in hematological patients with neutropenic fever. Altogether 70 hematological patients with neutropenic fever were included in this prospective study. NT-proBNP and C-reactive protein (CRP) were determined at the beginning of the neutropenic fever (d0) and then daily up to 3-4 days. The median NT-proBNP (interquartile range) increased from 127 (57-393) ng/L on d0 to 542 (194-1385) ng/L on d4. The increment of CRP was from 35 (17-61) mg/L on d0 to 109 (56-109) mg/L on d2. Neither serial NT-proBNP nor CRP predicted development of severe sepsis, but NT-proBNP was significantly higher in patients with previous cardiovascular disease than in those without. NT-proBNP seemed to reflect cardiac distress, but it did not help to predict the development of severe sepsis in this patient group.

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