The relationship between serum procalcitonin and CURB-65 criteria in hospitalized patients with community acquired pneumonia (CAP)

Abstract

Acute pneumonia is one of the most important and common disease with considerable mortality and morbidity. there are diagnostic scale such as inflammatory markers that one of them is procalcitonin increasing in bacterial infections that is helpful in addition to chest-x ray in diagnosing the pneumonia, hence; in CAP (community acquired pneumonia) is considered as the first marker along with infection. In a descriptive-analyticalcross sectional study, 70 of patients with definite diagnosis of CAP that they were with required conditions to study were assessed. In all patients procalcitonin level was measured before admission and its relation with CURB_65 criteria was assessed. In the last stage, all patients' data was analysed by SPSS software version 16. Totally, 43 (61.4%) of patients were male and 27(38.6%) were female. The mean age of patients was 65.9 + 14.8 that was in the range of 16-88 years old. The mean level of procalcitonin in patients was 4.7 + 1 ng /ml. In this study, there was no significant relation between CURB-65 criteria and procalcitonin level statistically. 11 of patients died in this assessment unfortunately. The relation of procalcitonin and disease outcomes was not significant. In our study each of CURB-65 parameters in CAP didn't have any significant relation with procalcitonin level statistically, but doing more multicentral studies for confirming or declining the biomarkers roles in CAP seems essential.