Early diagnosis of critical congenital heart diseases in newborns with the use of NT-proBNP

Critical heart diseases in newborns are the congenital heart diseases whereby delivery of cardiac and surgery care is prescribed to be executed in the first days and sometimes in the first hours of life of a baby. The paper presents the diagnostic findings of 33 newborns with critical congenital heart diseases; is evaluated the feasibility of using N-terminal predecessor of brain natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP) in neonatal screening for the diagnosis of critical cases of congenital heart diseases in the first days of life.Key words: newborn, NT-pro-BNP, congenital heart defects.