Procalcitonin as a  tool for the assessment of successful therapy of severe sepsis : An analysis using clinical routine data

Procalcitonin (PCT) is a well-evaluated biomarker for the detection of severe bacterial infections and monitoring effectiveness of antibiotic therapy. This study aims to evaluate the usefulness of PCT in a clinical routine setting. Of 358,763 clinical cases from 7 German hospitals in 2012 and 2013, 3854 cases had an ICD-10 code representing sepsis. A total of 1778 cases had pathologic PCT and one episode of infection. Of those, 671 showed a series of measures that was suitable to assess treatment success using PCT reduction. Propensity score matching was used to create two comparable groups with 211 patients in each group. The group with PCT reduction within 12 days showed a highly significant better proportion of survival (146/211 vs. 17/211; p < 0.0001). The odds ratio for death according to PCT reduction vs. nonreduction is 25.64 (p < 0.0001; 95 % CI: 14.49-45.45). PCT was normalized after an average of 6.2 days. The difference in survival implicates that PCT reduction is a suitable surrogate parameter to indicate successful antimicrobial therapy. Successful antibiotic therapy is a proven predictor for survival in sepsis. This study also showed concordant results in the group of patients with sepsis after abdominal surgery. Results from subgroup analyses confirm the initial findings. PCT reduction was used as surrogate for therapy success, as the antimicrobial therapy was not electronically available. PCT reduction is a strong predictor for survival. However, the data show that overall use of PCT to monitor sepsis therapy is not yet routinely established. Hospitals should establish algorithms for sepsis treatment that include PCT for the assessment of adequacy and the monitoring of success of the antimicrobial therapy.