Diagnostic and prognostic value of procalcitonin in patients with sepsis hospitalized at Centro Médico Docente la Trinidad

Abstract

            Sepsis is defined as a syndrome with physiological, biochemical and pathologic abnormalities in response to an infectious agent; which represents great mortality, along with risk of complications and disabilities. For its diagnosis, the SOFA score, from Sequential Organ Assessment Failure, is applied, which consists of laboratory and clinical findings. Considering the quantity of items it includes, and the expedite necessity to diagnose these patients in awe of its mortality and repercussion on life quality, along its impact on the healthcare system, the use of Procalcitonin (PCT) as a diagnostic marker has been proposed, because of its quick elevation on bacterial infections andits decrease amongst resolution. Due to the frequency of deterioration and severe complications as consequence of sepsis in Centro Médico Docente La Trinidad (CMDLT), we aim to establish the performance of PCT as a biomarker for diagnosis and prognosis of hospitalized patients with sepsis through an analytical observational retrospective study between the years 2019 and 2020.  The medical records from 243 patients with infectious disease were examined, then, SOFA Scale was applied, electing 73 patients, to whom 33 of them were solicited Procalcitonin levels.  We found that 24.2% of patients had negative PCT levels, while 75.8% were positive. The most common infection site was abdominal. The SOFA score showed correlation to a worse prognosis in these patients. It was determined that PCT positivization was related to a worse outcome of the disease, like admission to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) or death.