UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Sepsis is a life-threatening medical emergency that occurs when an infection causes a chain reaction throughout the body that can lead to the failure of multiple organs in rapid ...

Procalcitonin, or PCT, screening on the first day of a patient intensive care unit’s admission appears to be a promising diagnostic tool for identifying sepsis, according to a new study in CHEST.

A groundbreaking UK study led by the University of Liverpool has examined whether an additional blood test called procalcitonin (PCT) could safely shorten the time children spend on intravenous (IV) ...

Our immune systems can respond swiftly to an infection. But when the immune response is excessive or uncontrolled, it can cause a life-threatening condition known as sepsis. Any infection can lead to ...

The sixth most common principal diagnosis, sepsis, also takes the title as the most expensive inpatient diagnosis, racking up about $20 billion in hospitals’ aggregated annual costs. Sepsis isn’t ...

From random assignment to 28 days, the mean duration of antibiotic use was 9.8 days for the PCT group compared with 10.7 days for the standard care arm. (HealthDay News) — Sepsis care guided by ...

"We believe that our findings could be useful to guide the clinical evaluation in the emergency department in different ways . . . procalcitonin level should be evaluated not only on admission, but ...

For critically ill patients on antibiotics for suspected sepsis, monitoring one biomarker safely shortened the course of these medications in the ADAPT-Sepsis randomized trial. Daily assessment of ...

To be considered clinically relevant, a biomarker must have a high DA; [32] that is, it must have high sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV) and negative predictive value (NPV) ...

Objective: Procalcitonin has emerged as a promising infection marker, but previous reports from small-sized studies suggest nonspecific elevation of procalcitonin after pediatric heart surgery. As ...