The clinical value of serum procalcitonin in diagnosis and treatment for the patients with acute fever

Abstract

Objective To investigate the clinical value of serum procalcitonin (PCT) in the diagnosis and treatment of the patients with high fever of acute illness.Methods A total of 285 febrile patients suffered from acute illness were divided into the conventional group (n =122) and the PCT group (n =163).The routine blood examination and serum level of C-reactive protein (CRP) detection were carried out for the dignosis of these febrile patiens of two groups,and in addition,serum PCT determination was carried out in the patients of PCT group.The diagnosis was comnfirmed by etiology or immunologic assays.Routine guidelines of administrating antibiotics were used for treatment in the conventional group.Whereas the antibiotic therapy given to patients of PCT group was guided by the serum PCT levels.Two groups were compared in respect of the antibiotics costs,duration of treatment with antibiotics,percentage of patients treated with antibiotics,efficiency of antibiotics treatment and the mortality rate.The patients of PCT group were further divided as per inflammatory markers of bacterial infection into three subgroups,namely bacterial infection group,viral infection group and non-infection group.At last,the relationship between serum PCT level and the prognosis of patients was analyzed.Results The cost of antibiotics,percentage of patients treated with antibiotics,and course of antibiotics treatment were (Y) (3586.5 ± 703.3),95.08％ and (15.01 ± 11.21) days,respectively in conventional group,whereas (Y) (1871.2 ± 433.5),54.60％,(11.22 ±7.10) days in PCT group with statistically significant difference between two groups (P ＜ 0.01),but there were no significant differences in clinical efficiency and mortality between groups (P ＞ 0.05).Serum PCT (1.12 ± 0.88) ng/ml in bacterial infection group was higher than that in both virus infected group (0.21 ± 0.1 1) ng/ml and non-infected group (0.18 ± 0.13) ng/ml.There was no statistics difference in serum PCT level between virus infected group and non-infected group (P ＞ 0.05).The diagnosis of bacterial infection with serum PCT was better than other inflammatory markers because serum PCT had high sensitivity,specificity,positive predictive value (PPV) and negative predictive value (NPV).Conclusions Serum PCT level was reliable to differentiate the nature of acute infection with high fever and to evaluate the prognosis by emergency physicians.There was an important significance for rational use of antibiotics by the guidance of PCT levels. Key words: Acute fever; procalcitonin ; Infections