High Sensitivity Cardiac Tropotonin T after Heart Transplantation

Heart transplantation is the ultimate therapeutic option for patients with end-stage heart failure. Due to demographic change the number of patients suffering from end-stage heart failure – and thus the number of patients in need of heart transplantation – will continue to increase. However, there are still no reliable biomarkers to allow for prognosis of the outcome after heart transplantation. Troponin is a highly specific myocardial marker. Heart transplantat patients have shown increased troponin levels for a period of three months after transplant surgery, however, we still do not have a sufficient explanation for this observation. A few years ago, a new highly sensitive Troponin T (hs TNT) assay has been introduced. First data indicate that by means of this hsTNT assay, the increased postoperative troponin levels can be classified prognostically.