BACKGROUND Because acute liver failure (ALF) patients share many clinical features with severe sepsis and septic shock, identifying bacterial infection clinically in ALF patients is challenging. Procalcitonin (PCT) has proven to be a useful marker in detecting bacterial infection. We sought to determine whether PCT discriminated between presence and absence of infection in patients with ALF. ...

The most frequently used method in a three dimensional human gait analysis involves placing markers on the skin of the analyzed segment. This introduces a significant artifact, which strongly influences the bone position and orientation and joint kinematic estimates. In this study, we tested and evaluated the effect of adding a Kalman filter procedure to the previously reported point cluster te...

AIM To assess the accuracy of serum procalcitionin (PCT) as a diagnostic marker in verifying upper and lower gastrointestinal perforation (GIP). METHODS This retrospective study included 46 patients from the surgical intensive care unit (ICU) of the Second Affiliated Hospital of Harbin Medical University who were confirmed to have GIP between June 2013 and December 2016. Demographic and clini...

BACKGROUND Procalcitonin (PCT) is a well-known prognostic marker after elective cardiac surgery. However, the impact of elevated PCT in patients with an initially uneventful postoperative course is still unclear. The aim of this study was to evaluate PCT levels as a prognostic tool for delayed complications after elective cardiac surgery. METHODS A prospective study was performed in 751 patie...

To explore dynamic changes and clinical significance of serum IMD and PCT in patients with acute pancreatitis. According to acute pancreatitis guide, patients with acute pancreatitis were divided into mild acute pancreatitis (MAP group, n = 60) and severe acute pancreatitis (SAP group, n = 30). Serum IMD and serum PCT contents in MAP group and SAP group were detected in 24 hours, 48 hours, 72 h...

BACKGROUND Vitamin D sterols may modulate vascular response to inflammation and vascular calcification (VC). METHODS Rat aortic rings (RARs) and human vascular smooth muscle cells (HVSMCs) were treated in vitro with phosphate (P), tumour necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α), calcitriol (CTR) and paricalcitol (PCT). Rats having undergone subtotal nephrectomy (Nx) (n = 66) on a high-phosphorus diet we...

Aprotinin, a nonspecific serine protease inhibitor, has been primarily used as a haemostatic drug in cardiac surgery with cardio-pulmonary bypass (CPB). This study investigated the effect of aprotinin on the post-operative levels of procalcitonin (PCT) and a set of cytokines in patients undergoing pulmonary artery endarterectomy (PEA). We analyzed 60 patients with chronic thromboembolic pulmona...

A meta-analysis was performed to assess the accuracy of the procalcitonin (PCT) test for diagnosing neonatal sepsis. The major databases, MEDLINE, EMBASE and the Cochrane Library were searched for studies published between January 1996 and May 2009 that evaluated PCT as a diagnostic marker for neonatal sepsis and provided sufficient data to calculate sensitivity and specificity. Twenty-two stud...

BACKGROUND There is still no study evaluating the influence of gestational age (GA) per se on C reactive protein (CRP) and procalcitonin (PCT) reference intervals. We therefore investigated how length of gestation, age (hours), and prenatal and perinatal variables might influence the levels of CRP and PCT. We also determined 95% age-specific reference intervals for CRP and PCT in healthy preter...