ArticleBMC emergency medicine2023
Plasma calprotectin as an indicator of need of transfer to intensive care in patients with suspected sepsis at the emergency department.
Article in BMC emergency medicine, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.
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Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed.
- Clinical utility of biomarkers for outcomes prediction in adults with suspected sepsis presenting to the emergency department: a synthesis of current evidence.Health technology assessment (Winchester, England) · 2026Article
- Serum Calprotectin in Hospitalized Patients with COVID-19 in Relation to High-Dimensional Serum Proteomic Patterns.International journal of molecular sciences · 2026Observational
- The Value of First-Day CRP and NLR in Distinguishing Infectious from Non-Infectious Causes of Loss of Consciousness in the Emergency Department.Open access emergency medicine : OAEM · 2026Article
- Calprotectin as a Biomarker for Infectious Diseases: A Comparative Review with Conventional Inflammatory Markers.International journal of molecular sciences · 2025Review
- The Role of Calprotectin in the Diagnosis and Treatment of Inflammatory Bowel Disease.International journal of molecular sciences · 2025Review
- Is calprotectin a reliable marker in surgical ICU settings? A clinical evaluation of its role in sepsis and mortality prediction.Frontiers in medicine · 2025Article
- Calprotectin, a Promising Serological Biomarker for the Early Diagnosis of Superinfections with Multidrug-Resistant Bacteria in Patients with COVID-19.International journal of molecular sciences · 2024Article
- Navigating the Modern Landscape of Sepsis: Advances in Diagnosis and Treatment.International journal of molecular sciences · 2024Review
- Validation of Serum Calprotectin Relative to Other Biomarkers of Infection in Febrile Infants Presenting to the Emergency Department.Antibiotics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Sepsis Stewardship: The Puzzle of Antibiotic Therapy in the Context of Individualization of Decision Making.Journal of personalized medicine · 2024Review
- Analysis of Calprotectin as an Early Marker of Infections Is Economically Advantageous in Intensive Care-Treated Patients.Biomedicines · 2023Article
- Diagnostic and Prognostic Roles of Procalcitonin and Other Tools in Community-Acquired Pneumonia: A Narrative Review.Diagnostics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Review
- Calprotectin blockade inhibits long-term vascular pathology following peritoneal dialysis-associated bacterial infection.Frontiers in cellular and infection microbiology · 2023Article
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundDeciding whether to transfer patients with sepsis from the emergency department (ED) to intensive care units (ICUs) is challenging. We hypothesised that the new biomarker plasma calprotectin (p-calprotectin) could be used to aid the selection of patients for intensive care transfer, since it has been shown to be a promising tool for the determination of sepsis severity in critical care.
methodsThis prospective study was performed on consecutive sepsis alert patients in the ED of Karolinska University Hospital Huddinge. The sepsis alert mandates clinical assessment and decisions regarding treatment, disposition, and level of care by physicians from the ED, the Department of Infectious Diseases, and the ICU. Blood sample analysis for C-reactive protein, procalcitonin, neutrophils, and lymphocytes was routinely performed. P-calprotectin was analysed from frozen plasma samples, using a specific turbidimetric assay.
resultsThree-hundred fifty-one patients who triggered the sepsis alert were available for the study. Among 319 patients who were considered to have an infection, 66 patients (26%) were immediately transferred to the ICU or high-dependency unit (HDU), and 253 patients (74%) were transferred to ordinary wards. Median p-calprotectin was 2.2 mg/L (IQR 1.2-3.9 mg/L) for all patients with infection, it was 3.3 (IQR 1.6-5.2) for those transferred to ICU/HDU and 2.1 (IQR 1.1-3.5) for those transferred to ward units (p = 0.0001). Receiver operating characteristic curve analysis for transfer to the ICU/HDU showed superiority for p-calprotectin compared with procalcitonin and neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio, regarding both all sepsis alert cases and the patients with infection (p < 0.001 for all comparisons). The best p-calprotectin cut-off, 4.0 mg/L, showed a sensitivity of 42.5% and specificity of 83% for transfer to the ICU/HDU among patients with infection.
conclusionsIn sepsis alert patients, p-calprotectin was significantly elevated in patients who were subject to immediate ICU/HDU transfer after assessment by a multidisciplinary team. P-calprotectin was superior to traditional biomarkers in predicting the need for transfer to the ICU/HDU.
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