Influence of pathogen and focus of infection on procalcitonin values in sepsis: are there additional confounding factors?

Effect of procalcitonin on the severity and prognostic value of elderly patients with a severe infection of oral and maxillofacial space

This study aimed to investigate the effect on the severity and prognostic value of serum procalcitonin for elderly patients with oral and maxillofacial infections. We divided 163 elderly patients with severe oral and maxillofacial infection into survival and death groups according to the prognosis between June 2015 and May 2021, measured serum procalcitonin by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay on the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 5th, and 7th day after admission for the dynamic changes of serum procalcitonin level, collected the general physiological and biochemical indexes for the scores of acute physiology and general chronic condition, compared the correlation between serum procalcitonin, mean platelet count and APACHE score, analyzed the prognostic value of serum procalcitonin levels at different time after admission by ROC curve. The serum procalcitonin level increased significantly in both groups after admission, sharply increased at first and then rapidly decreased in the survival group, and continued to rise or declined slowly with fluctuation of high level in the death group. There was a negative correlation between serum procalcitonin level and mean platelet count (r = -0.698, P < .05) and a positive correlation between serum procalcitonin and APACHE II (R = 0.803, P < .05). The ROC curve showed that the serum procalcitonin level had little value on the first day and great value on the third day in predicting the prognosis of elderly patients with severe oral and maxillofacial infection (PCT1d = 0.539, PCT3d = 0.875, P < .05). The serum procalcitonin level is correlated with the severity of the disease in elderly patients with severe oral and maxillofacial space infection. Dynamic observation of it is helpful for the prognosis judgment of patients. After admission, serum procalcitonin level on the third day has a great value for the prognosis judgment of elderly patients with severe oral and maxillofacial space infection.

Prognostic values of procalcitonin and platelet in the patient with urosepsis

BACKGROUND

The patient suffering from urinary sepsis is often accompanied by elevated serum procalcitonin (PCT) levels and a decline in the average platelet count (PLT), which could result in a poor prognosis. This study aimed to evaluate the value of PCT and PLT in determining the severity of urinary sepsis.

METHODS

A total of 120 urosepsis patients enrolled were divided into a survival group and a death group, respectively, according to their status within 14 days after admission. Changes in PCT and PLT levels between the 2 groups were compared at different time points. A receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was eventually obtained to predict the prognostic value of PCT and PLT.

RESULTS

The PCT levels in the survival group declined gradually after admission, and the PLT decreased at first but increased rapidly in subsequence. The PCT level in the death group, however, declined in a flat-slope trend or was hardly noticeable together with the number of PLT reduced significantly. In particular, it is on the 3rd day that PCT tended to positively correlate with acute physiological and chronic health score II (APACHE II) score (r = 0.730, P < .05), but negatively with PLT (r = 0.472, P < .05). The APACHE II score and PLT (r = 0.612, P < .05) were also negatively correlated with each other. As indicated by the ROC curve, the PCT level on the 3rd day after admission was of great value for the clinical mortality prognosis, and the area under the curve was 0.858. Moreover, PLT also has a high predictive value for prognosis. Area under the curve is 0.951. When the PLT was more than 51 × 109 /L, the sensitivity was up to 90%, and the specificity was 90%.

CONCLUSION

PLT and PCT levels are closely related to the APACHE II score, which could indicate the severity of urosepsis in patients. The contribution of this study was to confirm that dynamic monitoring of the changes in PCT and PLT helps determine the prognosis of urosepsis patients.