Since Japanese scholar isolated B-type natriuretic peptide（BNP）from pig brain in 1988 and Hunt found N-terminal pro-B-type natriuretic peptide（NT-proBNP）in human plasma in 1995, its application in clinical practice has been developed rapidly. When ventricular volume, pressure load on heart and tension of ventricular muscle increase and myocardial ischemia happens, BNP genes in myocardial cells are activated, generating protein containing 134 amino acid, which becomes natriuretic peptide precursor containing 108 amino acid after signal peptide is removed, rapidly secreted into blood and soon degrading to BNP and NT-proBNP at a ratio of 1:1. Numerous researches showed that NT-proBNP is of great value in the diagnosis of heart failure and risk assessment of patient with acute coronary syndrome, a prognostic factor of the independent recurrence of cardiovascular events and a dangerous factor of the independent occurrence of cardiac death. In addition, NT-proBNP also plays an important role in other aspects, such as some disease diagnosis and prognosis. Some clinical applications of NT-proBNP will be reviewed in this article.