Several controlled clinical studies have evaluated the potential of the infection biomarker procalcitonin (PCT) to improve the diagnostic work-up of patients with bacterial infections and its influence on decisions regarding antibiotic therapy. Most research has focused on lower respiratory tract infections and critically ill sepsis patients. A clinical utility for PCT has also been found for p...

The use of procalcitonin (PCT) in the diagnosis of severe bacterial infections has been tested and proven by numerous international studies. In this study we intend to evaluate how PCT is used in patient admission in various medical and surgical departments and the correlations between PCT and severity scores used for patients in critical state. Based on this idea, we conducted a prospective ob...

BACKGROUND Because acute liver failure (ALF) patients share many clinical features with severe sepsis and septic shock, identifying bacterial infection clinically in ALF patients is challenging. Procalcitonin (PCT) has proven to be a useful marker in detecting bacterial infection. We sought to determine whether PCT discriminated between presence and absence of infection in patients with ALF. ...

The most frequently used method in a three dimensional human gait analysis involves placing markers on the skin of the analyzed segment. This introduces a significant artifact, which strongly influences the bone position and orientation and joint kinematic estimates. In this study, we tested and evaluated the effect of adding a Kalman filter procedure to the previously reported point cluster te...

AIM To assess the accuracy of serum procalcitionin (PCT) as a diagnostic marker in verifying upper and lower gastrointestinal perforation (GIP). METHODS This retrospective study included 46 patients from the surgical intensive care unit (ICU) of the Second Affiliated Hospital of Harbin Medical University who were confirmed to have GIP between June 2013 and December 2016. Demographic and clini...

BACKGROUND Procalcitonin (PCT) is a well-known prognostic marker after elective cardiac surgery. However, the impact of elevated PCT in patients with an initially uneventful postoperative course is still unclear. The aim of this study was to evaluate PCT levels as a prognostic tool for delayed complications after elective cardiac surgery. METHODS A prospective study was performed in 751 patie...

To explore dynamic changes and clinical significance of serum IMD and PCT in patients with acute pancreatitis. According to acute pancreatitis guide, patients with acute pancreatitis were divided into mild acute pancreatitis (MAP group, n = 60) and severe acute pancreatitis (SAP group, n = 30). Serum IMD and serum PCT contents in MAP group and SAP group were detected in 24 hours, 48 hours, 72 h...