The Usefulness of Growth Differentiation Factor 15 (GDF-15) for Risk Stratification in Cardiac Surgery

The study will be based on 2 patient cohorts, a group of patients studied during an observation period (2009) and a validation cohort of patients studied in 2008. The 2009 cohort (about 800 patients) will be analyzed to determine the predictive value of GDF-15 for predicting mortality and morbidity. The 2008 cohort (about 1200 patients) will be used to validate these findings. Besides conventional morbidity markers, new sensitive markers of organ dysfunction (FABP, NGAL, sFLT-1, PIGF) will also be tested in the 2009 group.