Background. Patients on long-term hemodialysis have a high mortality. Vario
us clinical and biochemical markers are of prognostic value. Cardiac tropon
in T (cTnT) is a sensitive and specific marker for myocardial damage. Asymp
tomatic dialysis patients have a high prevalence of cTnT concentrations abo
ve the diagnostic threshold for myocardial damage. There is controversy ove
r whether this represents a false positive cTnT or an underlying pathology
with a poor outcome. It is not known whether cTnT reflects comorbidity in t
hese patients.
Methods. A cohort of 73 long-term hospital hemodialysis patients had cTnT e
stimated once prior to a mid-week dialysis. Samples were analyzed using the
second-generation cTnT assay from Boehringer Mannheim on an Elecsys 1010 a
nalyzer. The standard diagnostic threshold for myocardial damage of 0.1 ng/
mL was used. A commonly employed measure of comorbidity (Khan) was applied
at the time cTnT was measured. Patients were followed for 15 months. Mortal
ity was used as the clinical end point. Kaplan-Meier survival analysis was
employed and differences between groups were assessed using the Cox-Mantel
log-rank test.
Results. Of the 73 patients, 20 were positive for cTnT and 53 were negative
, at the cut-off of 0.1 ng/mL. At fifteen months, 65% of the positive patie
nts were dead, whereas only 15% of the negative patients were dead. Surviva
l analysis confirmed that this difference was statistically significant (P
< 0.00001), and that the effect of cTnT on survival was independent of como
rbidity.
Conclusions. There is a high prevalence of positive cTnT in stable hemodial
ysis patients. A single estimation of cTnT in this group has significant pr
ognostic value, independent of comorbidity.