The value of Serum BNP for diagnosis of intracranial injury in minor head trauma

OBJECTIVE Head injury is the main cause of death among individuals younger than 45 years old. Cranial Computerized tomography (CT) is commonly used for diagnosis of head injury. Brain Natriuretic Peptide (BNP) is a peptide originally isolated from brain ventricles. The main aim of this study is to investigate BNP as an indicator of head injury among patients presenting to emergency department (ED) with minor head trauma. METHODS This was a prospective study conducted at the emergency department of the Numune Training and Research Hospital. A total of 162 patients who presented to the ED with minor head injury were enrolled. The patients were categorized into 2 groups as the cranial CT-negative and positive groups. The normality of the data was tested using One Sample Kolmogorov Smirnov test. Mann-Whitney U test was used to compare 2 independent groups while the Kruskal-Wallis test was utilized for comparison of more than 2 groups. A p-value of <0.05 was considered to be significant. RESULTS Ninety-six (59.3%) patients were male and 66 (40.7%) were female. The cranial CT-negative group had a median BNP level of 14.5 pg/ml while the cranial CT-positive group had a median BNP level of 13 pg/ml. There was no statistically significant difference between these two groups for serum BNP levels (p > 0.05). CONCLUSION This study suggested that serum BNP level wasn't used in defined of intracranial injury.