Assessment of the diagnostic accuracy of circulating natriuretic peptide concentrations to distinguish between cats with cardiac and non-cardiac causes of respiratory distress

✍ Scribed by David J. Connolly; Ricardo J. Soares Magalhaes; Virginia Luis Fuentes; Adrian Boswood; Georgina Cole; Alisdair Boag; Harriet M. Syme

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2009
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 267 KB
• Volume: 11
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1760-2734
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jvc.2009.03.001

✦ Synopsis

Objectives:

To determine if serum natriuretic peptide (np) concentrations could distinguish cardiac from non-cardiac causes of respiratory distress (rd) in cats.

Animals:

Seventy-four cats from 1 university hospital were used.

Methods:

Serum np concentrations were measured in 41 cats with non-cardiac respiratory distress (rd-nc) and compared to 33 cats with rd due to congestive heart failure (rd+chf) using sandwich enzyme immunoassays (elisa).

Results:

Rd-nc cats had lower (p=0.0001) median nt-proanp and nt-probnp concentrations (614 and 45 fmol/ml, respectively) than rd+chf cats (1690 and 523 fmol/ml, respectively). the area under the curve was 0.88 and 0.96 for the receiver operating curve analysis of the diagnostic accuracy of nt-proanp and nt-probnp concentrations to discriminate rd+chf from rd-nc cats (p=0.036). an optimum cut-off concentration of 986 fmol/ml for nt-proanp and 220 fmol/ml for nt-probnp accurately discriminated rd-nc from rc+chf cats with a sensitivity of 93.8% and 93.9% and a specificity of 80.3% and 87.8%, respectively.

Conclusions:

Serum np concentrations were different in rd+chf cats compared to rd-nc cats. evaluation of circulating np concentrations may be helpful in the initial approach to cats presenting with respiratory distress, particularly if advances in elisa technology result in a rapid cage-side test.