My cat's bloodwork shows elevated BNP. Should I worry about her heart?

Question

Hi, I recently did bloodwork for my cat + a complete physical. She's a 9 year old bengal cat, seemingly healthy. No audible murmur and clean respiratory tract + blood test came back normal and well except for one metric: elevated BNP. She has not been spayed and needs teeth cleaned, which we plan on doing in about a week or two. I have read horrible things about elevated BNP showing significant heart issues. We have her scheduled for an EKG. Would this be reason to worry? I am losing sleep. Pet's info: Cat | Bengal | Female | unspayed | 9 years and 4 months old | 6.2 lbs

Sara Farmer, DVM · Accepted Answer

The BNP has been shown to have a low specificity for heart disease, meaning that there are many things that can cause a false positive. While a negative can be a fairly good indicator that there is no significant structural heart disease, a positive may or may not mean the heart is affected. I typically recommend following up with an echocardiogram (not sure if that is what is scheduled, EKG usually refers to electrocardiogram which is different) to look for structural heart disease. There may or may not be a problem with the heart so I would try not to worry too much until you have more information.

My cat's bloodwork shows elevated BNP. Should I worry about her heart?

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