Brain Natriuretic Peptide as a Predictive Marker in Perioperative Cardiac Care: Ready for Use?

Coronary Artery Bypass Graft surgery (CABG) has an important value in the management of patients with coronary or valvular heart disease. Because of increasing the interest to perform less invasive interventions in these patients, CABG is now performed for patients with higher comorbidities and more severe cases having more post operative complications (1). Thus, clinical risk stratification has a great role in preoperative evaluation of patients undergoing CABG (2). Electrocardiography, hemodynamic parameters, biochemical markers like creatinin kinase (CK), myoglobulin creatinin kinase (CK-MB) and troponins and transthoracic/ transesophageal echocardiography are routinely used for the diagnosis of preoperative cardiac problems and prediction of perioperative comorbidities