Intensive care medicine
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Intensive care medicine · Aug 2023
Observational StudyProcalcitonin and C-reactive protein to rule out early bacterial coinfection in COVID-19 critically ill patients.
Although the prevalence of community-acquired respiratory bacterial coinfection upon hospital admission in patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been reported to be < 5%, almost three-quarters of patients received antibiotics. We aim to investigate whether procalcitonin (PCT) or C-reactive protein (CRP) upon admission could be helpful biomarkers to identify bacterial coinfection among patients with COVID-19 pneumonia. ⋯ Our study suggests that measurements of PCT and CRP, alone and at a single time point, are not useful for ruling in or out bacterial coinfection in viral pneumonia by COVID-19.