ArticlePakistan journal of medical sciences
Procalcitonin as a biomarker of bacterial infection in critically ill patients admitted with suspected Sepsis in Intensive Care Unit of a tertiary care hospital.
Article in Pakistan journal of medical sciences. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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6 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 8 citations in OpenAlex.
- Operative management of acute abdomen after bariatric surgery in the emergency setting: the OBA guidelines.World journal of emergency surgery : WJES · 2022Guideline
- Integration of stress hyperglycemia ratio and c-reactive protein level improves postoperative acute kidney injury risk stratification after noncardiac surgery: A nested case-control study.Pakistan journal of medical sciences · 2026Article
- Progress on the Global Research Agenda for Antimicrobial Resistance in Human Health in Pakistan: Findings and Implications.Infection and drug resistance · 2025Review
- A Simple Bacteremia Score for Predicting Bacteremia in Patients with Suspected Infection in the Emergency Department: A Cohort Study.Journal of personalized medicine · 2023Article
- Article
- Opportunities for Antimicrobial Stewardship in Caring for Febrile Pediatric Inpatients in Abu Dhabi.Global pediatric health · 2022Article
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
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Abstract
objectiveTo compare the diagnostic accuracy of procalcitonin (PCT), C- reactive protein (CRP), total leukocyte count (TLC) and lactate in critically ill patients admitted with suspicion of sepsis.
methodsIt was a cross sectional study conducted at the department of Chemical Pathology and Endocrinology AFIP, Rawalpindi, in collaboration with Medical and surgical intensive care units (ICU) of CMH Rawalpindi from January 2019 to December 2019. A total of 126 patients of both genders with age above 18 years and fulfilling the inclusion criteria of systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS) were inducted in the study.
resultsOut of 126 patients 82 (65%) patients have positive blood culture results. Male predominance was noted in patients with positive blood culture. Out of 82 patients with positive blood culture results 69(84%) patients have positive PCT results as well whereas 13(15%) patients with positive blood culture results have negative PCT values. 57(69%) patients had Gram negative bacterial infection and 25(30%) patients had Gram positive bacterial infection. Significant difference was noted between the medians of PCT in blood culture positive and blood culture negative group (p value< 0.05) whereas no significant difference was found between medians of CRP, TLC and lactate between blood culture positive and blood culture negative patients (p value > 0.05). ROC curve analysis of PCT, CRP and TLC were done, keeping blood culture as reference standard, PCT showed largest area under the curve (AUC) and clearly outperformed TLC and CRP. PCT showed AUC of 0.781 as compared to CRP and TLC, which was 0.568 and 0.617 respectively. PCT showed sensitivity of 93.9%, specificity of 47.7%, positive predictive value (PPV) of 77% and negative predictive value (NPV) of 80.8%.
conclusionHigher NPV makes it a reliable marker for screening out sepsis in suspected cases.
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