The study population included all patients consecutively referred to the Department of Clinical Physiology, Nuclear Medicine and PET, Rigshospitalet for routine monitoring of LVEF in relation to treatment with cardiotoxic chemotherapy including anthracyclines in the period January-December 2004. All patients underwent MUGA, routinely performed when half of the cumulative dose of anthracyclines has been given, with estimation of LVEF and a blood sample drawn for BNP measurement as described below. Data concerning hospital admissions of the patients were obtained from the Danish UCM710 National Patient Register. The Danish National Patient Register is a nationwide register covering all hospital admissions in Denmark. Every Danish citizen has a personal identification number assigned at birth or RBx-0597 immigration which is used by public authorities including DNPR. Each hospital admission is routinely reported to DNPR using the international classification of diseases codes for diagnoses and surgical procedure. Furthermore, data on the causes of death were obtained from the Danish National register of causes of death but in this study only the dates of death and not the specific causes of death were included in analyzes. The study end points were 1) CHF: hospitalization for congestive heart failure and 2) death: all-cause mortality. The present study prospectively investigated BNP concentration and LVEF as predictors of two distinct clinical endpoints in 333 anthracycline-treated cancer patients. The most important finding was that both BNP and LVEF independently predicted congestive heart failure. However, only BNP and not LVEF was associated with overall mortality. Although the level of BNP can be influenced by e.g. adipositas, pulmonary and renal disease and drugs such as angiontensin converting enzyme inhibitors, BNP can predict over-all mortality in a wide range of other patient categories such as hypertension, stroke and diabetes In the literature the reported incidence of cardiovascular toxicity from anticancer treatment is highly variable and depends on the type of drug being used.