Abstract
Background Predicting successful liberation from mechanical ventilation (MV) in critically ill patients is challenging. Brain natriuretic peptide (BNP) has been proposed to help guide decision-making for readiness to liberate from MV following a spontaneous breathing trial (SBT).Methods We performed a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized and prospective observational studies that measured BNP levels at the time of SBT in patients receiving MV. The primary endpoint was successful liberation from MV (absence of re-intubation or non-invasive ventilation at 48h). Statistical analyses include bi-variate and Moses-Littenberg models, and DerSimonian-Laird pooling of areas under ROC curve (AUROC).Results A total of 731 articles were screened. After pre-specified inclusion criteria, 18 adult and 2 pediatric studies were included. The measure of the relative variation of BNP during SBT (ΔBNP%) after exclusion of SBT failure by clinical criteria in adults yielded a sensitivity and specificity of 0.889 [0.831-0.929] and 0.828 [0.730-0.896] respectively, with a pooled AUROC of 0.92 [0.88-0.97] for successful liberation from MV. The pooled AUROC for any method of analysis for absolute variation of BNP (ΔBNP), pre-SBT BNP and post-SBT BNP were 0.89 [0.83-0.95], 0.77 [0.63-0.91], and 0.85 [0.80-0.90], respectively.Conclusion The ΔBNP during a SBT is an accurate incremental tool after SBT success by clinical indices to predict successful liberation from MV in adults. There is insufficient data to support its use as an alternate test to clinical indices of SBT or the use of ΔBNP, BNP-pre and BNP-post as an alternate or incremental test, or in pediatric patients.
N-terminal pro-brain natriuretic peptide and high-sensitivity troponin T exhibit additive prognostic value for the outcome of critically ill patients
