The novel findings from the present study are as follows: 1) serum GDF-15 elevation was involved in severe coronary artery disease and J-HBR criteria in patients with IHD; 2) multivariate Cox proportional hazards regression analysis demonstrated that serum GDF-15 was an independent predictor of all-cause death, MACE, HF-related rehospitalization, and bleeding events but not of thrombotic events; and 3) serum GDF-15 improved prediction ability for all-cause death, MACE, HF-related rehospitalization, and bleeding events. The gene discussed is GDF15; the disease is coronary artery disorder.