Background: Measurement of biomarkers provides a cost-effective and widely available method to estimate cardiac dysfunction and clinical outcome of patients with acute myocardial infarction (AMI).
Sources of data: PubMed entries with terms 'myocardial infarction' and the respective biomarker.
Areas of agreement: Cardiac troponins and natriuretic peptides are closely related to left ventricular dysfunction and the occurrence of adverse clinical events following AMI.
Areas of contention: The incremental value of novel biomarkers is controversial.
Future directions: The combination of traditional and novel biomarkers might further improve risk stratification of patients with AMI.
Search strategy: We searched all entries on the PubMed database with the MeSH terms 'myocardial infarction' and 'cardiac troponins', 'natriuretic peptides', 'copeptin', galectin-3', 'corin', 'fetuin-A', 'adiponectin' and 'microRNA'.
Keywords: acute myocardial infarction; biomarkers; cardiac function; prognosis.
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