BMC emergency medicine
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BMC emergency medicine · Apr 2016
Randomized Controlled Trial Multicenter StudyHigher diagnostic accuracy and cost-effectiveness using procalcitonin in the treatment of emergency medicine patients with fever (The HiTEMP study): a multicenter randomized study.
Fever is a common symptom in the emergency department(ED). Fever can be caused by bacterial infections, which are treated with antibiotics. Often, bacterial infections cannot be ruled out in the ED using standard diagnostics, and empiric antibiotic treatment is started. Procalcitonin(PCT) is a biomarker for bacterial infections, but its role in an undifferentiated ED population remains unclear. We hypothesize that PCT-guided therapy may reduce antibiotics prescription in undifferentiated febrile ED patients. The primary objectives of this study are to determine a) the efficacy, b) the safety of PCT-guided therapy, and c) the accuracy of the biomarker PCT for bacterial infections. The secondary objective is to study the cost-effectiveness of PCT-guided therapy. ⋯ NTR4949.