Introduction:
Cardiovascular diseases (CVD) are most common cause of death. SCORE Risk Chart is proved cardiovascular death risk parameter while barin natriuretic peptide (BNP) is a new and independent marker of heart failure and CVD. The aim of the study was to compare the BNP serlevels to SCORE Risk Chart.

Material and methods:
302 patients aged 62 +/-8 with at least one cardiovascular risk factor (previous myocardial infarction, asymptomatic valvular heart disease, ischemic heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, obesity, hypercholesterolemia, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, renal failure) were investigated. The serBNP level as well as total sercholesterol level, blood pressure and anamnesis were evaluated. On the basis the patients were divided into 3 groups according to the SCORE Risk Chart (group A: 179 patients with automatically high
SCORE risk due to proved CVD, group B: 44 patients with SCORE at least 5% and group C: 66 patients with SCORE lower than 5%), where group A and B are in the high cardiovascular death risk and gruop C is in the low risk.

Results:
The study showed the significant difference in the BNP levels between examined groups. There was statistically higher BNP mean in the high SCORE risk groups (A and B) comparing to the group C (p=0.0004). The difference between group A and B was insignificant (p=0.369). The correlation between SCORE Risk Chart results and BNP levels in the group B and C was assessed with the outcome of parameter r significantly different from zero (r=0.2541, 95%CI:(0.06459;0.4259), p=0.0074).

Conclusions:
In patients with high cardiovascular risk due to SCORE Risk Charts, BNP serlevels were significantly higher. In such population deeper analysis of left ventricular function should be performed to detect asymptomatic left ventricular dysfunction.