OBJECTIVE To evaluate the capacity of the postcoital test (PCT) to predict spontaneous pregnancy in a large cohort study of subfertile couples. DESIGN Prospective study. SETTING Department of reproductive medicine of 38 hospitals in the Netherlands. PATIENT(S) Between January 2002 and February 2004, we prospectively included consecutive subfertile couples who had not been evaluated previo...

OBJECTIVE To determine the diagnostic value of serum and synovial procalcitonin (PCT) for bacterial arthritis and to determine the cellular origin of synovial PCT. METHODS A prospective study enrolled 42 patients with acute arthritis including 11 bacterial arthritis, 18 rheumatoid arthritis and 13 crystal induced arthritis. Diagnostic values of serum and synovial PCT levels were determined by...

Plasma cell neoplasms in humans comprise plasma cell myeloma, otherwise known as multiple myeloma, Ig deposition and heavy chain diseases, and plasmacytoma (PCT). A subset of PCT, designated extramedullary PCT, is distinguished from multiple myeloma and solitary PCT of bone by its distribution among various tissue sites but not the bone marrow. Extramedullary (extraosseus) PCT are rare spontane...

INTRODUCTION This prospective study investigated the predictive value of procalcitonin (PCT) for survival in 242 adult patients with severe sepsis and septic shock treated in intensive care. METHODS PCT was analyzed from blood samples of all patients at baseline, and 155 patients 72 hours later. RESULTS The median PCT serum concentration on day 0 was 5.0 ng/ml (interquartile range (IQR) 1.0...

BACKGROUND/AIMS The aim of this study is to assess serum procalcitonin (PCT) for early prediction of severe acute pancreatitis compared with multiple scoring systems and biomarkers. METHODS Forty-four patients with acute pancreatitis confirmed by radiological evidences, laboratory assessments, and clinical manifestation were prospectively enrolled. All blood samples and image studies were obt...

BACKGROUND Urinary infections are a common type of pediatric disease, and their treatment and prognosis are closely correlated with infection location. Common clinical manifestations and laboratory tests are insufficient to differentiate between acute pyelonephritis and lower urinary tract infection. This study was conducted to explore a diagnostic method for upper and lower urinary tract infec...

Purpose. To investigate whether absolute value of procalcitonin (PCT) or the change (delta-PCT) is better indicator of infection in intensive care patients. Materials and Methods. Post hoc analysis of a prospective observational study. Patients with suspected new-onset infection were included in whom PCT, C-reactive protein (CRP), temperature, and leukocyte (WBC) values were measured on inclusi...

In this work we propose a temporal extension to the Parsimonious Covering Theory (PCT). PCT provides a theoretical foundation for the diagnostic reasoning process as an abductive reasoning based associations between causes with their consequences. Our temporal extension of PCT allows one to associate to a disease a temporal evolution of its symptoms. The elimination of temporally inconsistent h...

Serum procalcitonin (PCT) levels rapidly increase in patients with invasive bacterial disease. PCT levels increase faster than do C-reactive protein levels. Furthermore, a rapid decrease in the PCT level is supporting evidence that the source of the bacterial infection is responding to clinical management. In patients with community-acquired bacterial pneumonia, sequential PCT levels are useful...

The aim of this study was to evaluate procalcitonin (PCT), C-reactive protein (CRP), platelet count (PLT) and serum lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) as early markers for diagnosis of SIRS, bacterial sepsis and systemic candidiasis in intensive care unit (ICU) patients. Based on blood culture results, the patients were divided into a sepsis group (70 patients), a SIRS group (42 patients) and a system...