• Enferm. Infecc. Microbiol. Clin. · Aug 2014

    [Use of procalcitonin and C-reactive protein as infection markers in febrile neutropenic patients undergoing haematopoietic stem cell transplant].

    • Marina Sánchez-Yepes, Eduardo Aznar-Oroval, Pablo Lorente-Alegre, Tomás García-Lozano, Isabel Picón-Roig, Pilar Pérez-Ballestero, and Blanca Ortiz-Muñoz.
    • Servicio de Laboratorio de Análisis Clínicos y Microbiología, Fundación Instituto Valenciano de Oncología, Valencia, España. Electronic address: ma.sanchezy@comv.es.
    • Enferm. Infecc. Microbiol. Clin. 2014 Aug 1; 32 (7): 418-23.

    Introduction And ObjectiveNeutropenia is a frequent sign in patients who are going to have a haematopoietic stem cell transplant (HSCT). Infection is an important complication in these patients, which is favoured by immunosuppression and the degree of neutropenia. This study aims to evaluate the diagnostic usefulness of procalcitonin (PCT) and C-reactive protein (CRP) in onco-haematological patients undergoing chemotherapy and HSCT to determine the origin of the fever.Patients And MethodsPCT and CRP values were measured in 30 episodes of febrile neutropenia: before starting chemotherapy, appearance of neutropenia, onset of fever, days 1, 2, 3 and 6 after the onset of fever, and when the febrile episode ended. The episodes were classified as 5 bacteraemia, 3 microbiologically documented infections, 10 clinical infections, and 12 fevers of unknown origin.ResultsThe highest PCT mean values corresponded to the group of patients with bacteraemia. Statistically significant differences (P=.04) were found on the second day after the onset of fever. The cut-off point of 0.5ng/ml showed a sensitivity of 66% and a specificity of 75%. PCR results showed statistically significant differences on days 1, 2 and 3 after the onset of fever (P=.01, P=.003, and P=.002, respectively). The cut-off point of 7.5mg/L had a sensitivity of 88% and a specificity of 58%.ConclusionsThe combination of PCT and CRP is an insufficient method to detect bacterial infections and may not replace the proper clinical and microbiological diagnosis.Copyright © 2013 Elsevier España, S.L.U. y Sociedad Española de Enfermedades Infecciosas y Microbiología Clínica. All rights reserved.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…