ArticleFrontiers in medicine2025
Prognostic utility of procalcitonin and lactate clearance for in-hospital mortality in sepsis.
Article in Frontiers in medicine, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed.
- Lactate in acute kidney injury: pathobiology, risk stratification, and clinical interpretation.Renal failure · 2026Review
- Article
- Association between serum lactate trajectories and short-term mortality in pediatric acute kidney injury patients.Jornal de pediatria · 2026Article
- Prognostic Value of 72-h Reassessment Using SOFA Score, C-Reactive Protein, and Lactate in a 72-h Landmark Cohort of Intensive Care Patients with Gram-Negative Sepsis.Medicina (Kaunas, Lithuania) · 2026Article
- Dynamic Parameters within the First 72 H of ICU Admission Predict Extubation Failure and 28-Day Mortality in Severe Pneumonia-Induced ARDS: A Retrospective Cohort Study.The clinical respiratory journal · 2026Article
- Dynamic changes and prognostic utility of procalcitonin, D-dimer, and lactate dehydrogenase in patients with sepsis and septic shock.Frontiers in medicine · 2026Article
- Serial lactate-procalcitonin interaction identifies a high-risk phenotype in 24-h conditional survivors of post-cardiac arrest syndrome: a CART-based analysis.Frontiers in medicine · 2026Article
- Predictive Value of the Neutrophil‒Lymphocyte Ratio in the Risk Stratification and Prognosis for Patients with Acute Cholangitis: A Single-Center Retrospective Study.Journal of inflammation research · 2026Article
- Peak Lactate Within 24 h and Mortality in Septic Shock Patients Receiving Continuous Renal Replacement Therapy: A Real-World Cohort from an Asian ICU (2018-2020).Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Background: Sepsis remains a significant global health burden and a leading cause of in-hospital mortality. Recent research has focused on the prognostic value of biomarker kinetics, particularly clearance rates and inflammatory markers such as neutrophil-to-lymphocyte (NLR) ratio. This study aimed to compare the utility of procalcitonin and lactate clearance in predicting in-hospital mortality among septic patients and to identify an optimal procalcitonin clearance (PCTc) cut-off to differentiate survivors from non-survivors. Methods: This was a retrospective cohort study of adult patients who presented with sepsis or septic shock to a tertiary care ED in Lebanon between November 2018 and March 2024. Procalcitonin and lactate readings were recorded along with demographics, comorbidities and therapeutic interventions. PCTc and lactate clearance were calculated as percentage change between the first and second readings, and lactate clearance was considered positive if > 10%. The primary outcome was in-hospital mortality, and secondary outcomes included ED, ICU and hospital length of stay. ROC curve was used to assess prognostic accuracy of biomarkers and derive an optimal PCTc cutoff. Multivariable logistic regression was conducted to evaluate the association of in-hospital mortality with lactate and procalcitonin clearances. Results: Five hundred seventy-four patients with sepsis and septic shock were included. Mean age was 71.4 ± 16.5 years with male predominance (55.4%). Optimal cutoff for PCTc was found to be 23.1% (94.0% sensitivity, 7.0% specificity). Patients were then stratified based on lactate and procalcitonin clearances above and below the cutoffs to compare baseline parameters, interventions and outcomes. Patients with lactate clearance > 10 had significantly lower rates of chronic kidney disease ( Conclusion: Lactate clearance with 10% cutoff is a better predictor of in-hospital mortality in patients presenting to the ED with sepsis or septic shock compared to PCTc. An optimal PCTc cutoff of 23.1% was identified; however, it did not reach statistical significance for survival. Future prospective studies are needed to better define optimal biomarker cutoffs and compare their predictive accuracy for in-hospital mortality.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.