OBJECTIVE The twofold aim of this prospective clinical study was to assess the accuracy of procalcitonin as a marker of postoperative infection after thoracic surgery and to compare it with C-reactive protein. METHODS Procalcitonin and C-reactive protein concentrations, clinical symptoms of infection and systemic inflammation were recorded preoperatively and 5 days postoperatively in 157 pati...

In patients with ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP), guidelines recommend antibiotic therapy adjustment according to microbiology results after 72 h. Circulating procalcitonin levels may provide evidence that facilitates the reduction of antibiotic therapy. In a multicentre, randomised, controlled trial, 101 patients with VAP were assigned to an antibiotic discontinuation strategy according ...

OBJECTIVES During the 2009 influenza A H1N1 pandemic, it became difficult to differentiate viral infections from other conditions in patients admitted to the intensive care unit. We sought to evaluate the behavior and diagnostic utility of procalcitonin, C-reactive protein and four other molecules in patients with suspected 2009 Influenza A H1N1 infection. METHODS The serum levels of procalci...

Procalcitonin is a sensitive and specific marker of bacterial infection; low results allow clinicians to safely de-escalate antibiotics. This retrospective cohort study aimed to determine the effect of low procalcitonin results on withholding, discontinuing, or de-escalating antibiotics in hospitalized patients at a tertiary care center. Antibiotics were initiated or continued without de-escala...

objective(s) in the last few years, serum procalcitonin has been proposed as an early marker of infections in neonates, with varying results. in this study, we aimed to investigate the value of procalcitonin, and c- reactive protein in establishing the diagnosis of neonatal sepsis. materials and methods blood samples were collected at admission from 69 neonates with suspected infection (admitte...

Liver transplantation has been reported to initiate increases in procalcitonin levels, in the absence of bacterial infection. The results of a study investigating the course of procalcitonin levels over several days after liver transplantation in noninfected patients were recently reported in Critical Care. This study shows that procalcitonin levels increase only transiently, immediately after ...

BACKGROUND The role of procalcitonin in diagnosing bacterial infection has mainly been studied in patients with severe infections. There is no study on the value of procalcitonin measurements in adults with lower respiratory tract infection (LRTI) treated in primary care. AIM To evaluate the accuracy of plasma procalcitonin in predicting radiographic pneumonia, bacterial infection, and advers...

OBJECTIVE To quantify the accuracy of serum procalcitonin as a diagnostic test for sepsis, severe sepsis, or septic shock in adults in intensive care units or after surgery or trauma, alone and compared with C-reactive protein. To draw and compare the summary receiver operating characteristics curves for procalcitonin and C-reactive protein from the literature. DATA SOURCE MEDLINE (keywords: ...

Previous studies have suggested that procalcitonin is a reliable marker for predicting bacteremia. However, these studies have had relatively small sample sizes or focused on a single clinical entity. The primary endpoint of this study was to investigate the diagnostic accuracy of procalcitonin for predicting or excluding clinically relevant pathogen categories in patients with suspected bloods...

The utility of procalcitonin levels to improve the accuracy of clinical and microbiological parameters in diagnosing ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) was evaluated. Sequential measurement of procalcitonin and C-reactive protein levels and the calculation of the simplified Clinical Pulmonary Infection Scores (CPIS) were performed in 44 patients mechanically-ventilated for >48 h with neither...