Search Tag: PCT
2023 09 May
Sepsis is characterised by a dysregulated host response to infection resulting in organ dysfunction. It poses a significant global health problem, with a high mortality risk and millions of patients affected annually. Epidemiological studies have shown that nearly 20% of septic patients require mechanical ventilation, leading to significant healthcare...Read more
2021 20 Apr
Sepsis is a global healthcare problem, with 50 million cases each year and 11 million related deaths 1 . It’s the life-threatening complication of an infection, in which the host’s immune response to a pathogen damages its own organs. The clinical diagnosis of sepsis relies mostly on signs and symptoms that are neither sensitive nor specific enough...Read more
2020 14 Sep
Professor Michael Mansour is a physician-scientist with a research concentration in immune responses against invading pathogens. He attends on the Clinical Transplant Infectious Diseases and Immunocompromised Host Service at the Massachusetts General Hospital - Division of Infectious Diseases, where he cares for solid and stem cell transplant recipients...Read more
2020 23 Jun
Procalcitonin – A Critical Biomarker Procalcitonin (PCT) is a member of the calcitonin family and known as a critical biomarker for bacterial infections. To be effective a biomarker must have high diagnostic accuracy and allow early and rapid diagnosis. PCT fulfills these requirements and has already demonstrated superior diagnostic accuracy compared...Read more
2020 13 Jun
Sepsis biomarkers have an important role in the diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment of sepsis management. If timely and accurate information about biomarkers becomes available, the physician can not only make better therapeutic choices but also monitor the efficacy of the intervention in progress and adjust it accordingly. In a previous review...Read more
2019 30 Aug
The controversy surrounding the efficacy of the blood infection biomarker, procalcitonin (PCT), for guidance in acute infections and sepsis treatment remains. PCT is a calcitonin precursor produced by epithelial cells when infected with bacteria and has been identified as a marker due to the protein levels’ variation upon infection initiation and cessation....Read more
2018 06 Feb
Using biomarkers as a guide to tailor the duration of antibiotic treatment in respiratory infections is an attractive hypothesis assessed in several studies. However, after more than a decade of randomised controlled trials on procalcitonin (PCT)-guided antibiotic treatment, the evidence favouring PCT use is still less than compelling due to limitations...Read more