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Eur J Cardiothorac Surg 2007;31:333. doi:10.1016/j.ejcts.2006.11.020
Copyright © 2007, European Association for Cardio-Thoracic Surgery. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Letters to the Editor

What will the ‘creatinine kinase’ be in 2016?

Antonis Ioannidesa, Adel Helmyb, Ioannis Dimitropoulosc, Vassilis Vassilioud,*

a Bart's and Royal London NHS Trust, London EC1A 7BE, UK
b Academic Department of Neurosurgery, Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge CB2 2QQ, UK
c Department of Medicine, Frenchay Hospital, Bristol BS16 1JE, UK
d University of Cambridge and Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge CB2 2QQ, UK

Received 17 October 2006; accepted 16 November 2006.

* Corresponding author. Address: 3 Ventress Farm Court, Cambridge CB1 8HD, UK. Tel.: +44 7739745476; fax: +44 117 9596235. (Email: vassiliou{at}doctors.org.uk).

Key Words: CK • Creatinine kinase • Creatine kinase • Myocardial damage

Reading the article by Florath and colleagues [1], we are both surprised and concerned with the use of the term ‘creatinine kinase’ as a measure of myocardial damage. We are surprised as such a term does not exist and concerned that we see this published in a specialist journal. We are certain that the authors wished to refer to creatine kinase, often abbreviated as CK, an enzyme that catalyzes the reversible phosphorylation of creatine to phosphorylcreatine. The conversion of creatine to creatinine requires no enzymatic input and no enzyme called ‘creatinine kinase’ exists.

We are concerned that this trend of incorrect terminology is rapidly increasing. A Medline search performed on October 14th, 2006 for the incorrect term ‘creatinine kinase’ revealed 437 entries. Organizing these entries according to which decade they were published, we could see that from 1966–1976 there were only 2 incorrect entries, from 1976–1986 there were 27, from 1986–1996 there were 170 and from 1996–2006 (rather worryingly) there were 238. This represents a disproportionate increase of the incorrect term (creatinine kinase) compared with the correct term (creatine kinase). If this trend continues, using mathematical modelling (y = 85.1x – 103.5, correlation: R 2 = 0.9397, or y = 2.1816x 3.6113, correlation: R 2 = 0.9821), we estimate that in the next decade there will be just under 350 incorrect entries appearing in Medline. We are hoping that letters such as this one will help reduce this number.

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to S. Tsiakkouris, of the Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, UK, for his valuable assistance with mathematical modelling.

References

  1. Florath I, Albert A, Hassanein W, Arnrich B, Rosendahl U, Ennker IC, Ennker J. Current determinants of 30-day and 3-month mortality in over 2000 aortic valve replacements: impact of routine laboratory parameters. Eur J Cardiothorac Surg 2006;30(5):716-721[PMID: 16965919].[Abstract/Free Full Text]




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