• Pamela Indino, Pierre Lemarchand, Pierre Bady, Antoine de Torrenté, Louis Genné, and Daniel Genné.
• Département de médecine interne, Hôpital de la ville, rue du Chasseral 20, 2300 La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland.
• Int. J. Infect. Dis. 2008 May 1; 12 (3): 319-24.

ObjectiveTo better assess the diagnosis of an infection in patients presenting at an emergency department with peripheral blood leukocytosis (>10 x 10(9) cells/l) on laboratory testing.MethodsWe prospectively evaluated serum procalcitonin concentration (PCT), C-reactive protein (CRP), and erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR). Patients were divided into two groups according to their final diagnosis: patients with infection and those without infection. PCT, CRP, and ESR were compared between these groups. Sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive values, negative predictive values, receiver operating characteristic curves, and areas under the curves were calculated for each biological measurement.ResultsOut of 173 patients, 99 (57%) had a final diagnosis of systemic infection. If a cutoff point of 0.5 ng/ml is considered, procalcitonin concentration had a sensitivity of 0.57, a specificity of 0.85, a negative predictive value of 0.59, and a positive predictive value of 0.84 for the diagnosis of a systemic infection. Adding CRP or ESR to PCT gave no more information (p=0.84).ConclusionsOnly about half of the patients attending the emergency department with leukocytosis were suffering from an infection. Determination of the procalcitonin level may be useful for these patients, particularly in the case of a value higher than 0.5 ng/ml.

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