title: Evaluation of the Meritas® BNP Test for Point-of-Care Testing.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  BNP and NT-proBNP are widely used as rule-out tests for heart failure (HF) and they are frequently requested by primary care doctors. A point-of-care (POC) test would reduce the time to diagnosis for patients with suspected HF. The aim of the study was to evaluate a POC BNP test.
  
  
  METHODS
  Plasma BNP results obtained with the Meritas® POC instrument (n = 82) were compared with the corresponding plasma BNP results analyzed on an Advia Centaur analyzer (Siemens Healthcare, Erlangen, Germany).
  
  
  RESULTS
  The two methods showed concordant results with a Passing-Bablok correlation between the two methods: BNP(Meritas) = 1.00 x BNP(Siemens) + 1.09; r = 0.9773.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The study show that the Meritas® BNP assay could be used in primary care permitting rapid BNP testing to rule out heart failure.
authors: Johan
authors: J
authors: Olausson
authors: Christer
authors: C
authors: Peterson
authors: Mats
authors: M
authors: Bergström
authors: Anders
authors: A
authors: Larsson
mesh_terms: D015415:Biomarkers / Q000097:blood; D004867:Equipment Design; D006333:Heart Failure / Q000097:blood / Q000175:diagnosis*; D006801:Humans; D007118:Immunoassay / Q000295:instrumentation; D020097:Natriuretic Peptide, Brain / Q000097:blood*; D010446:Peptide Fragments / Q000097:blood*; D019095:Point-of-Care Systems; D011237:Predictive Value of Tests; D013997:Time Factors
chemical_list: D015415:Biomarkers; D010446:Peptide Fragments; C109794:pro-brain natriuretic peptide (1-76); D020097:Natriuretic Peptide, Brain