ARTICOLI ORIGINALI   

Chirurgia 2015 February;28(1):1-6

Copyright © 2015 EDIZIONI MINERVA MEDICA

lingua: Inglese

Procalcitonin as a biomarker for predicting infection and assessing short-term adverse patient prognosis after endovascular aortic repair

Lin Y. ¹, Wei X. ², Yang X. ³, Cai A. ³, Zhou Y. ³, Wu Y. ³, Yu D. ³

¹ Department of Cardiology, 2nd Clinical Medical College of Jinan University, Shenzhen People Hospital, Shenzhen, China; ² Department of Cardiology, Southern Medical University, Affiliated Guangdong General Hospital, Guangdong Academy of Medical Sciences, Guangzhou, China; ³ Deparment of Cardiology, Guangdong Academy of Medical Sciences, Guangzhou, China

AIM: The objective was to investigate the effectiveness of using serum PCT levels to predict infection and assess the short-term clinical outcome of patients after EVAR when compared to conventional techniques such as serum C-reactive protein (CRP) levels as well as erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR).
METHODS: According to predefined criteria, 204 patients were selected post-EVAR and separated into groups with complications associated with infection and those without infection. All patients post-EVAR were evaluated for in-hospital death to determine the correlation between PCT levels in patient sera and adverse prognosis of infection and short-term clinical outcome by comparing PCT levels with CRP levels and ESR.
RESULTS: We show that the post-EVAR patients were segregated into 148 non-infected patients and 56 infected patients. The PCT levels in the infected patients were significantly higher than in the non-infected patients (P<0.001). Most importantly, we show that the PCT levels had a higher accuracy in predicting infection compared with CRP levels and ESR in the infected patients. Furthermore, during hospitalization, we show that higher PCT levels correlated with a significantly higher mortality rate within both infected and non-infected patients.
CONCLUSION: We conclude that PCT is a more reliable biological marker for predicting infection and short-term adverse patient prognosis after EVAR compared with CRP and ESR.