ORIGINAL INVESTIGATION N-Terminal Pro–B-Type Natriuretic Peptide as a Diagnostic Test for Ventricular Dysfunction in Patients With Coronary Disease Data From the Heart and Soul Study

tide (NT-proBNP) testing is useful for diagnosing acute decompensated heart failure. Whether NT-proBNP can be used to detect ventricular dysfunction in patients with stable coronary heart disease (CHD) and no history of heart failure is unknown. Methods: We measured NT-proBNP levels and per-formed transthoracic echocardiography in 815 partici-pants from the Heart and Soul Study, who had stable CHD and no history of heart failure. We hypothesized that NT-proBNP concentrations lower than 100 pg/mL would rule out ventricular dysfunction and concentrations higher than 500 pg/mL would identify ventricular dysfunction. We calculated sensitivities, specificities, likelihood ra-tios, and areas under the receiver operating characteris-tic curves for NT-proBNP as a case-finding instrumen