N-terminal Pro-B–Type Natriuretic Peptide (NT-proBNP) Concentrations in Hemodialysis Patients: Prognostic Value of Baseline and Follow-up Measurements

uretic peptide (NT-proBNP) concentrations are asso-ciated with increased cardiovascular mortality in chronic hemodialysis patients. Previous studies fo-cused on prevalent dialysis patients and examined sin-gle measurements of NT-proBNP in time. METHODS: We measured NT-proBNP concentrations in 2990 incident hemodialysis patients to examine the risk of 90-day and 1-year mortality associated with baseline NT-proBNP concentrations. In addition, we calculated the change in concentrations after 3 months in a subset of 585 patients to examine the association between longitudinal changes in NT-proBNP and sub-sequent mortality. RESULTS: Increasing quartiles of NT-proBNP were as-sociated with a monotonic increase in 90-day [quartil