Utility of Biomarkers to Improve Prediction of Readmission or Mortality After Cardiac Surgery

Brown and colleagues evaluated levels of six biomarkers to determine if they improved the prediction of readmission after cardiac surgery: ST2, galectin-3, N-terminal pro-brain natriuretic peptide, cystatin C, interleukin-6, and interleukin-10. The addition of these biomarkers to a model based on only clinical risk factors improved the predictive ability of the model in the derivation cohort (area under the receiver-operating characteristics curve (AUROC) of 0.74 versus 0.66), but it did not improve prediction in an external validation cohort (AUROC of 0.52 versus 0.48).