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Statement of Problem: The association between unreplaced missing posterior teeth and migraine has not been sufficiently reported., Purpose: The purpose of this cross-sectional study was to investigate the relationships between unreplaced missing posterior teeth and migraine or severe headaches., Material and Methods: Data from the US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 1999-2004 on 12 662 participants aged between 20 and 85 years were analyzed. The survey produced complete data on dentition examination, dietary intakes, and self-reported migraine or severe headaches. Weighted multivariable logistic regression analyses were performed (α=.05)., Results: A total of 20.28% of the participants had migraine or severe headaches. After adjusting demographic, clinical, and dietary covariates, the total number of missing teeth was not significantly associated with migraine or severe headaches, and only having both anterior and posterior missing teeth was significantly associated with migraine or severe headaches. The odds ratio (OR) and confidence interval (CI) was 1.32(1.09, 1.60) (P=.007). A significantly positive correlation was found between the number of unreplaced missing teeth and migraine or severe headaches. An increase of 1 in the number of unreplaced missing teeth was associated with a 3% increase in migraine or severe headaches (OR and CI: 1.03(1.01, 1.06), P=.012). However, no significant relationship was found between replaced missing teeth and migraine or severe headaches (OR and CI: 1.00(0.99, 1.01), P=.800). Furthermore, unreplaced missing posterior teeth and both unreplaced anterior and posterior teeth were significantly related with more migraine or severe headaches, but no significant association of unreplaced teeth was found with migraine or severe headaches only in the anterior zone in the adjusted model (OR and CI: anterior teeth unreplaced: 0.90(0.43, 1.88), P=.800; posterior teeth unreplaced: 1.14(1.00, 1.30), P=.047; both anterior and posterior teeth unreplaced: 1.61(1.16, 2.22), P=.007). Because of the important association between posterior missing teeth and migraine or severe headaches, further analyses found a 1 tooth increase in unreplaced posterior teeth was related to a 4% increment in migraine or severe headaches (OR and CI: 1.04(1.01, 1.07), P=.017); however, the number of replaced posterior teeth was not associated with migraine or severe headaches (OR and CI: 1.00(0.99, 1.02), P=.900)., Conclusions: The number of unreplaced missing posterior teeth was positively associated with migraine or severe headaches, while missing but restored posterior teeth were not associated with migraine or severe headaches in a US population., (Copyright © 2024 Editorial Council for The Journal of Prosthetic Dentistry. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

As the most abundant renewable carbon source, lignocellulose holds potential as a raw material for biofuels and biochar. The components required for biofuel production differ from those for biochar, so combining processes can reduce costs. Biofuel preparation necessitates cellulase treatment of lignocellulose. This study examines the effects of various enzyme treatment conditions (dosage, time, temperature) on lignocellulose, focusing on the properties of biochar derived from it (BC-SR). A mathematical model was constructed to study the relationship between enzyme treatment conditions and BC-SR properties. BC-SR exhibited high adsorption selectivity for bisphenol A and outperformed untreated biochar in fixed-bed column experiments, demonstrating greater removal efficiency and structural integrity. This study provides insights into the impact of enzymatic treatment on biochar and offers a cost-effective method for producing stable, efficient biochar. Additionally, a highly persistent biochar can enter the carbon trading market as a carbon-neutral technology, further realizing economic and environmental benefits., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Chemoautotrophs, the crucial contributors to biological carbon fixation, derive energy from reducing specific inorganic substances and utilize CO 2 for growth. However, the release of extracellular free organic carbon (EFOC) by chemoautotrophic microorganisms can inhibit their own growth and metabolism. To reduce the feedback inhibition effect, a low-release biochar (BC-LR) was applied to adsorb EFOC. BC-LR not only adsorbed EFOC, but also selectively adsorbed the main inhibitory component, low molecular weight organics, in EFOC. In contrast, ordinary biochar could not effectively adsorb EFOC and its addition inhibited microbial growth and CO 2 fixation. In Transwell culture, BC-LR promoted microbial growth by 190% and CO 2 fixation by 29%, and exhibited better economic advantage, when compared with granular activated carbon. These findings provide a novel insight into the interaction between biochar and autotrophic microbial metabolism, offering an economically feasible approach to mitigate feedback inhibition of metabolites and promoting biological CO 2 fixation., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Accurate localization of objects of interest in remote sensing images (RSIs) is of great significance for object identification, resource management, decision-making and disaster relief response. However, many difficulties, like complex backgrounds, dense target quantities, large-scale variations, and small-scale objects, which make the detection accuracy unsatisfactory. To improve the detection accuracy, we propose an Adaptive Adjacent Context Negotiation Network (A 2 CN-Net). Firstly, the composite fast Fourier convolution (CFFC) module is given to reduce the information loss of small objects, which is inserted into the backbone network to obtain spectral global context information. Then, the Global Context Information Enhancement (GCIE) module is given to capture and aggregate global spatial features, which is beneficial for locating objects of different scales. Furthermore, to alleviate the aliasing effect caused by the fusion of adjacent feature layers, a novel Adaptive Adjacent Context Negotiation network (A 2 CN) is given to adaptive integration of multi-level features, which consists of local and adjacent branches, with the local branch adaptively highlighting feature information and the adjacent branch introducing global information at the adjacent level to enhance feature representation. In the meantime, considering the variability in the focus of feature layers in different dimensions, learnable weights are applied to the local and adjacent branches for adaptive feature fusion. Finally, extensive experiments are performed in several available public datasets, including DIOR and DOTA-v1.0. Experimental studies show that A 2 CN-Net can significantly boost detection performance, with mAP increasing to 74.2% and 79.2%, respectively., Competing Interests: The authors declare there are no competing interests., (©2024 Dong et al.)

Objectives: We investigated the association between dietary flavonoids intake and periodontitis., Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional study analyzed data from the US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2009-2010 on 3025 participants aged between 30 and 80 years who had full-mouth periodontal examination and dietary flavonoids intake data. This study used periodontal pocket depth (PPD) and clinical attachment loss (CAL) as periodontitis markers. Data were analyzed using multivariate linear regression., Results: After adjusting confounders, the middle tertile of total dietary flavonoids was associated with decreased mean PPD (0.06 mm, P = 0.016) and mean CAL (0.13 mm, P = 0.001) and the top tertile of total dietary flavonoids was significantly associated with decreases in mean PPD (0.05 mm, P = 0.029) and mean CAL (0.11 mm, P = 0.010). Both the middle and top tertiles of total flavonoids intake were significantly related with decreased mean CAL in females, those flossing 0 days/week, overweight and non-diabetic population but not in males, smokers, those flossing 1-6 days/week and diabetic population. Higher anthocyanidins, flavones and flavonols intake was significantly associated with decreased mean PPD and mean CAL while higher flavanones intake was only significantly associated with decreased mean CAL. Higher anthocyanidins intake was particularly related with greatest decreases in mean CAL (top tertile: 0.22 mm, middle tertile: 0.17 mm, both P < 0.010). However, no significant associations were found between isoflavones and flavan&#95;3&#95;ols intake and mean CAL., Conclusions: Higher dietary flavonoids intake may be beneficial for periodontal health., Clinical Relevance: Additional anthocyanidins, flavanones, flavones and flavonols intake was associated with improved periodontal health., (© 2024. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

Objective: We investigated the association of severely damaged endodontically infected tooth with carotid artery plaque and abnormal mean carotid intima-media thickness (CIMT) ≥ 1.0 mm., Methods: A retrospective analysis of 1502 control participants and 1552 participants with severely damaged endodontically infected tooth who received routine medical and dental checkup in Health Management Center, Xiangya Hospital was performed. Carotid plaque and CIMT were measured with B-mode tomographic ultrasound. Data were analyzed using logistic and linear regression., Results: Severely damaged endodontically infected tooth group had a significantly higher prevalence of carotid plaque (41.62%) compared to 32.22% of carotid plaque in control group. Participants with severely damaged endodontically infected tooth had a significantly higher prevalence of abnormal CIMT (16.17%) and a significantly increased level of CIMT (0.79 ± 0.16 mm) in comparison to 10.79% of abnormal CIMT and 0.77 ± 0.14 mm CIMT in control participants. Severely damaged endodontically infected tooth was significantly related with formation of carotid plaque [1.37(1.18-1.60), P < 0.001], top quartile length [1.21(1.02-1.44), P = 0.029] and top quartile thickness [1.27(1.08-1.51), P = 0.005] of carotid plaque and abnormal CIMT [1.47(1.18-1.83), P < 0.001]. Severely damaged endodontically infected tooth was significantly associated with both single [1.277(1.056-1.546), P = 0.012] and multiple carotid plaques [1.488(1.214-1.825), P < 0.001] and instable carotid plaques [1.380(1.167-1.632), P < 0.001]. Presence of severely damaged endodontically infected tooth increased 0.588 mm of carotid plaque length (P = 0.001), 0.157 mm of carotid plaque thickness (P < 0.001) and 0.015 mm of CIMT (P = 0.005)., Conclusion: Severely damaged endodontically infected tooth was associated with carotid plaque and abnormal CIMT., Clinical Relevance: Early treatment of endodontically infected tooth is warranted., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

Background: Most studies support parafunctions play an important role in temporomandibular disorders (TMD), whereas the association between tooth wear and TMD remains controversial. Betel nut chewing as a parafunction is popular in South and Southeast Asia. We therefore investigated the association of severely worn dentition resulting from betel nut chewing with TMD., Methods: A cross-sectional analysis of 408 control participants (male: 380, female: 28, 43.62 ± 9.54 years) and 408 participants with betel nut chewing related severely worn dentition (male: 380, female: 28, 43.73 ± 8.93 years) who received dental and TMD checkup according to Diagnostic Criteria for Temporomandibular Disorders (DC/TMD) in Health Management Center, Xiangya Hospital was performed. Betel nut chewing related severely worn dentition meant all the natural teeth had moderate to severe tooth wear [Tooth Wear Index (TWI) ≥ 2)] including ≥ 2 severe wear teeth (TWI ≥ 3) due to betel nut chewing. Multivariable logistic regression analysis was used., Results: After adjusting for age, gender, betel nut chewing related severely worn dentition, oral submucosal fibrosis, number of missing teeth, number of dental quadrants with missing teeth, visible third molar and orthodontic history, variables of age, gender and betel nut chewing related severely worn dentition were significant for overall TMD. Multivariable analysis showed betel nut chewing related severely worn dentition was significantly associated with intra-articular TMD [odds ratio and 95% confidence intervals: 1.689 (1.271-2.244), P = 0.001] in a betel nut chewing dose-dependent manner., Conclusion: Betel nut chewing related severely worn dentition was associated with intra-articular TMD., (© 2023. The Author(s).)

Background: Congenitally missing tooth is the most common dental abnormality which leaves spaces in the arch, leads to numerous forms of malocclusion due to the Bolton index discrepancy and is even associated with abnormal craniofacial morphology. Even though the roles of malocclusion and tooth loss in temporomandibular disorders (TMD) development remain controversial, basic researches have found some common molecules are involved in osteoarthritis and dental agenesis. However, the association of congenitally missing teeth with TMD is unknown. We hence investigated the association of congenitally missing teeth with TMD., Methods: A cross-sectional analysis of 586 control participants (male: 287, female: 299, 38.33 ± 11.65 years) and 583 participants with non-third molar congenitally missing teeth (male: 238, female: 345, 39.13 ± 11.67 years) who consecutively received routine dental and TMD checkup according to Diagnostic Criteria for Temporomandibular Disorders Axis I in Health Management Center, Xiangya Hospital was performed. Logistic regression analysis was used to study the association of congenitally missing teeth with TMD., Results: The congenitally missing teeth group included 581 hypodontia and 2 oligodontia participants. The congenitally missing anterior teeth participants, the congenitally missing posterior teeth participants and participants with both congenitally missing anterior and posterior teeth accounted for 88.34%, 8.40% and 3.26% of the congenitally missing teeth group respectively. Congenitally missing teeth group had greater ratios of females and orthodontic history. Participants with congenitally missing teeth had a significantly higher prevalence of overall TMD (67.24%) in comparison to control participants (45.90%). After adjusting age, gender, presence of congenitally missing teeth, number of congenitally missing teeth, number of non-congenitally missing teeth, number of dental quadrants with missing teeth, visible third molar and orthodontic history, the variables of age, gender, presence of congenitally missing teeth and number of dental quadrants with missing teeth were significant for overall TMD. Multivariable logistic regression analysis showed congenitally missing tooth was significantly related with overall TMD [odds ratio (OR):1.689(1.080-2.642), P = 0.022], intra-articular TMD [OR: 1.711(1.103-2.656), P = 0.017] and pain-related TMD [OR: 3.093(1.321-7.239), P = 0.009]., Conclusion: Congenitally missing tooth is a risk factor for TMD. When treating the congenitally missing teeth population, TMJ evaluation and multidisciplinary strategies are necessary., (© 2023. The Author(s).)

Background: The doctor/nurse and police officer population have some common typical characteristics of great professional pressure and night shift and past studies indicated oral mucosa lesions were closely associated with psychological factors and health-risking behaviors, however the prevalence of recurrent aphthous stomatitis (RAS) and the two commonly seen oral potentially malignant disorders of oral submucosal fibrosis (OSF) and oral leukoplakia in doctor/nurse and police officer in the Betel quid chewing city of Mainland China is unknown The cross-sectional study was to determine the prevalence differences of RAS, oral leukoplakia and OSF among doctor/nurse, police officer and non-doctor/nurse and non-police officer population aged 20-59 years., Methods: RAS, OSF and oral leukoplakia were examined in doctor/nurse group (male: 659, female: 2439), police officer group (male: 839, female: 262) and non-doctor/nurse and non-police officer group (male: 7576, female: 8129) from 2020-11-01 to 2021-08-31 in Health Management Center, Xiangya Hospital in Changsha city, Hunan province., Results: The prevalence rates of RAS, OSF, oral leukoplakia and oral leukoplakia combined with OSF in male and female non-doctor/nurse and non-police officer group are 8.32‰ and 10.83‰, 58.08‰ and 1.23‰, 11.75‰ and 0.25‰, 7.66‰ and 0.12‰ respectively. Compared with the non-doctor/nurse and non-police officer population, prevalence rates of RAS in male (24.27‰) and female (20.50‰) doctor/nurse population were significantly higher. Prevalence rates of OSF (21.24‰) and oral leukoplakia (3.03‰) in male doctor/nurse population were significantly less but prevalence rates of OSF (93.71‰), oral leukoplakia (20.17‰) and oral leukoplakia combined with OSF (15.42‰) for male police officer were significantly greater in comparison with male non-doctor/nurse and non-police officer group. OSF and oral leukoplakia prevalence rates were obvious lower for the female than the counterpart male group, but there were no significant differences of OSF and oral leukoplakia prevalence rates between the female non-doctor/nurse and non-police officer and female doctor/nurse group. Oral leukoplakia was not found in the female police officers., Conclusions: Doctor/nurse population have higher prevalence of RAS. Male doctors/nurses have lower prevalence of OSF and oral leukoplakia, while male police officers have higher prevalence of OSF, oral leukoplakia and oral leukoplakia combined with OSF., (© 2022. The Author(s).)

This paper mainly studies the model design of a thin-film heat-flux sensor (TFHFS), and focuses on the comparison of three dynamic calibration methods. The primary motivation for studying this came from the urgent need for heat-flux dynamic measurements in extreme environments, and the one-sidedness of the dynamic performance evaluation of the corresponding TFHFS. The dynamic theoretical model of the TFHFS was originally established on the principle of a temperature gradient on the basis of a thermal radiation boundary. Then, a novel TFHFS sensor was developed, which can be used at temperatures above 880 °C and has a high sensitivity of 2.0 × 10 -5 mV/(W/m 2 ). It can function stably for long durations under a heat-flux density of 3 MW/m 2 . The steady-state, transient, and frequency calibration of a TFHFS were compared to comprehensively analyze the dynamic characteristics of the TFHFS. The steady-state response time measured by the step excitation method was found to be 0.978 s. The QR decomposition method was applied to the steady-state response experimental model construction, and the fitting degree of a second-order transfer function model obtained was 98.61%. Secondly, the transient response time of the TFHFS was 0.31 ms based on the pulse-excitation method. The transient relationship between the surface temperature and the heat flux, and the pulse-width dependence of the TFHFS transient response time were established. Surprisingly, the response frequency of the TFHFS, about 3000 Hz, was efficiently tested using the frequency response function (FRF), which benefitted from the harmonic characteristics of a periodic square-wave excitation signal. Finally, a comprehensive evaluation of the dynamic performance of the TFHFS was realized.

Advancements in deep neural networks have made remarkable leap-forwards in crop detection. However, the detection of wheat ears is an important yet challenging task due to the complex background, dense targets, and overlaps between wheat ears. Currently, many detectors have made significant progress in improving detection accuracy. However, some of them are not able to make a good balance between computational cost and precision to meet the needs of deployment in real world. To address these issues, a lightweight and efficient wheat ear detector with Shuffle Polarized Self-Attention (SPSA) is proposed in this paper. Specifically, we first utilize a lightweight backbone network with asymmetric convolution for effective feature extraction. Next, SPSA attention is given to adaptively select focused positions and produce a more discriminative representation of the features. This strategy introduces polarized self-attention to spatial dimension and channel dimension and adopts Shuffle Units to combine those two types of attention mechanisms effectively. Finally, the TanhExp activation function is adopted to accelerate the inference speed and reduce the training time, and CIOU loss is used as the border regression loss function to enhance the detection ability of occlusion and overlaps between targets. Experimental results on the Global Wheat Head Detection dataset show that our method achieves superior detection performance compared with other state-of-the-art approaches., Competing Interests: Pengcheng Liu is an Academic Editor for PeerJ., (© 2022 Dong et al.)

Medical imaging modalities, such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and computerized tomography (CT), have allowed medical researchers and clinicians to examine the structural and functional features of the human body, thereby assisting the clinical diagnosis. However, due to the highly controlled imaging environment, the imaging process often creates noise, which seriously affects the analysis of the medical images. In this study, a medical imaging enhancement algorithm is presented for ankle joint talar osteochondral injury. The gradient operator is used to transform the image into the gradient domain, and fuzzy entropy is employed to replace the gradient to determine the diffusion coefficient of the gradient field. The differential operator is used to discretize the image, and a partial differential enhancement model is constructed to achieve image detail enhancement. Three objective evaluation indexes, namely, signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), information entropy (IE), and edge protection index (EPI), were employed to evaluate the image enhancement capability of the proposed algorithm. Experimental results show that the algorithm can better suppress noise while enhancing image details. Compared with the original image, the histogram of the transformed image is more uniform and flat and the gray level is clearer., Competing Interests: The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest., (Copyright © 2021 Yundong Liu and Xufeng He.)

A fiber/Ag-Cu films surface plasmon resonance (SPR) refractive index (RI) sensor composed of multimode fiber-no-core-fiber-multimode fiber (MMF-NCF-MMF) structure is designed. The sensing region length and Cu film deposition time of sensor are gradually optimized by the control variable method, which finally achieves the improvement of sensor properties. We experimentally compared the sensing performance of the fiber/Ag film and fiber/Ag-Cu films sensor. Experimental results show that the fiber/Ag-Cu films sensor has good linearity (R-square = 0.993), and its sensitivity is as high as 3957 nm/RIU in the refractive index detection range of 1.3328-1.3853, which is 1109 nm/RIU higher than the sensitivity of a conventional fiber/Ag film sensor. The sensor presented in this paper adopts the structure with composite metal film, which outperforms the common single-layer metal film in chemical stability such as oxidation resistance and mechanical hardness. Meanwhile, the SPR sensor with MMF-NCF-MMF structure has the advantages of convenient manufacture and compact structure. In conclusion, it can bestow a unique advantage in the field of biological detection or chemical analysis.

A high-sensitivity temperature sensor based on gold-coated D-shaped photonic crystal fiber is proposed in this paper. To enhance the sensing performances, gold as the surface plasmon resonance material is coated on the polishing surface. The thermosensitive liquid consists of ethanol and chloroform, and it is placed on the outer layer of the photonic crystal fiber. As the phase-matching condition is satisfied, the core mode couples to the surface plasmon polariton mode, and energy transfer occurs. The influences of the structural parameters on the sensing characteristics were studied using the finite element method. The numerical results show the average sensitivity can reach up to 10.61 nm/°C, and the linearity R 2 =0.99341 for the temperature sensing ranges of 0-60°C. Moreover, a good spectral shape can be realized by the proposed fiber. Compared with some previously reported temperature sensors, the proposed temperature sensor shows excellent performances in terms of the sensitivity, detection range, and fabrication.

In this paper, a D-shaped photonic crystal fiber is designed to achieve a single-polarization filter that has a broadband filtering property. The D-shaped structure is a triangular array of air holes, forming a micro-opening on the side-polished surface and plating a gold layer thereon. The investigation of the polarization filter is based on the finite element method; its principle is surface plasmon resonance. The single-polarization filter in the y direction is realized by adjusting parameters such as the apertures of the fiber, the thickness of the gold layer, and the polishing depth. The confinement loss of the core mode in y polarization reaches to a high value of 376.31 dB/cm at 1.55 μm, and that of the x polarization is 0.17 dB/cm; the former is 2225.35 times the latter. When the fiber length L is 1 mm, the crosstalk reaches a peak value of 326.7 dB at 1.55 μm, and the bandwidth of crosstalk higher than 20 dB is 480 nm. In addition, the external gold coating operation is more conducive to application in the manufacturing process. This filter will be an effective application of the optical communication window near 1.55 μm.

We propose a D-shaped photonic crystal fiber (PCF) refractive index sensor with ultrahigh sensitivity and a wide detection range. The gold layer is deposited on the polished surface, avoiding filling or coating inside the air holes of the PCF. The influences of the gold layer thickness and the diameter of the larger air holes are investigated. The sensing characteristics of the proposed sensor are analyzed by the finite element method. The maximum sensitivity can reach 31,000  nm/RIU, and the refractive index detection range is from 1.32 to 1.40. Our proposed PCF has excellent sensing characteristics and is competitive in sensing devices.

Objective: To assess the significance of elevated serum N-terminal pro-brain natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP) levels in predicting 30-day mortality rate for patients in intensive care unit (ICU)., Methods: A retrospective study was conducted. The clinical data of 480 patients admitted to ICU in Tianjin First Center Hospital from June 2012 to October 2013 were studied. The characteristics of patients were recorded, the acute physiology and chronic health evaluationII ( APACHEII) score was calculated, and the routine blood tests, blood biochemistry, and serum NT-proBNP level within 24 hours after admission were determined. Patients were divided into non-survival and survival groups according to 30-day outcome, and the characteristics and clinical parameters were compared between two groups, and single factor analysis affecting prognosis was analyzed. All patients were divided into four groups according to four percentile method as NT-proBNP<280 ng/L (group Q1), 280 ng/L≤NT-proBNP<1 200 ng/L (group Q2), 1 200 ng/L≤NT-proBNP<1 990 ng/L (group Q3), 1 990 ng/L≤NT-proBNP<4 700 ng/L (group Q4). A Cox regression analysis was used to test the independence of the predictors. A receiver operator characteristic curve (ROC curve) was plotted to compare the power of APACHEII score and NT-proBNP in predicting the outcome. Kaplan-Meier analysis was used to assess survival rate among different NT-proBNP patients., Results: By single factor analysis it was shown that age, APACHEII score, creatinine, NT-proBNP and severe infection were those influencing the outcome. NT-proBNP 1 200-4 700 ng/L (groups Q3 and Q4) and APACHEII score>20 were independent risk factors for predicting outcome [relative risk (RR) for group Q3 was 3.624, 95% credibility interval (95%CI) was 1.258-10.138; RR for group Q4 was 5.059, 95%CI was 3.202-9.993; RR for APACHEII score>20 was 2.987, 95%CI was 1.345-5.823]. The area under the ROC curve (AUC) for APACHEII score and serum NT-proBNP was similar, and it was 0.831 (95%CI 0.778-0.884) and 0.876 (95%CI 0.827-0.925), respectively. The cut-off value of NT-proBNP for predicting mortality was 1 250 ng/L. Kaplan-Meier analysis showed that groups of Q2, Q3 and Q4 had lower cumulative survival rate compared with group Q1 (26.5%, 25.4%, 16.2% vs. 29.6%), and group Q4 showed most significant extent of lowering of survival rate (χ(2)=122.920, P<0.05)., Conclusions: Elevated NT-proBNP level in ICU patients signify severity of the disease, and it is an independent predictor of death of ICU patients.