Draper J, et al. - In a large unselected population of heart failure (HF) patients admitted to a tertiary hospital in the UK, researchers assessed the diagnostic accuracy of plasma N-terminal pro-brain natriuretic peptide (NTproBNP) in patients > 80. Via NTproBNP led heart failure service, screening for HF was performed in 1,995 consecutive patients over a 12-month period. A total of 413 patients presented with HF for the first time, with 36.1% of these patients being > 80. According to findings, NTproBNP demonstrated less accuracy in the detection of HF in patients > 80 years of age. Furthermore, a 7.5% reduction in receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC) area for patients > 80 years vs those under 60-79 years of age was seen. For a HF patient > 80 years of age, 466pg/mL was the lowest NTproBNP recorded. This indicated a need to modify the NTproBNP threshold for ruling out HF in patients > 80 years of age.