Cardiac
Blood markers of heart strain and heart-muscle injury.
Most heart disease is diagnosed with a stethoscope and an ultrasound, but two blood markers add real value — especially for catching silent disease and for sorting out a breathless patient.
NT-proBNP rises when the heart muscle is stretched or strained, so it flags heart disease before symptoms appear and helps answer the crucial question in a coughing or breathless pet: heart, or lungs? Cardiac troponin, released when heart-muscle cells are injured, complements it by signalling active damage.
These markers screen and triage rather than diagnose: a raised value is a prompt to image the heart with an echocardiogram, not a conclusion on its own. This matters most in cats, whose heart disease is often completely silent — no murmur, no signs — until a crisis, which is exactly where a screening blood test earns its place.
Parameters in this panel
- NT-proBNPDogs & cats
NT-proBNP is a substance the heart muscle releases when it is stretched or strained, so a rising value can flag heart disease before outward signs appear. It's a screening and triage tool — high values prompt imaging (an echocardiogram) rather than a diagnosis on their own.
- Cardiac Troponin IDogs & cats
Troponin is released when heart-muscle cells are injured, so a raised level signals active cardiac stress or damage. It's read alongside NT-proBNP and the physical exam — NT-proBNP reports strain, troponin reports injury — and it's very sensitive, so even small rises are taken seriously.
- GDF-15Dogs & cats
GDF-15 is a stress signal released by cells under strain, and in humans it is one of the strongest single-marker predictors of frailty and mortality. It is measurable in dogs and rises in preclinical heart disease — but there is no established canine or feline reference range, so it is read as a direction of travel, never judged against a threshold.