A new blood test that measures a particular marker of cardiac distress can markedly improve the ability to diagnose or exclude congestive heart failure in patients with shortness of breath who come to hospital emergency departments. The report from researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) finds that measuring levels of a protein called NT-proBNP was significantly better at identifying heart failure than was standard clinical evaluation. The report will appear in the April 15 issue of the American Journal of Cardiology and has been released online prior to print publication. “We found that testing with the NT-proBNP assay was
