American journal of respiratory and critical care medicine
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Am. J. Respir. Crit. Care Med. · Nov 2014
Randomized Controlled Trial Multicenter StudyProcalcitonin Algorithm in Critically Ill Adults with Undifferentiated Infection or Suspected Sepsis: A Randomized Controlled Trial.
The role of procalcitonin (PCT), a widely used sepsis biomarker, in critically ill patients with sepsis is undetermined. ⋯ In critically ill adults with undifferentiated infections, a PCT algorithm including 0.1 ng/ml cut-off did not achieve 25% reduction in duration of antibiotic treatment. Clinical trial registered with http://www.anzctr.org.au (ACTRN12610000809033).
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Am. J. Respir. Crit. Care Med. · Nov 2014
Randomized Controlled TrialNon-Invasive Saliva-Based EGFR Gene Mutation Detection in Lung Cancer Patients.
Constitutive activation of the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) is prevalent in epithelial cancers, particularly in non-small cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC). Mutations identified in EGFR predict the sensitivity to EGFR-targeted therapy. Detection of these mutations is mainly based on tissue biopsy, which is invasive, expensive, and time consuming. ⋯ Our data indicate that EFIRM is effective, accurate, rapid, user-friendly, and cost effective for the detection of EGFR mutations in the saliva of patients with NSCLC. We termed this saliva-based EGFR mutation detection (SABER).