In daily routine diagnosis, there are few parameters available to monitor
critically ill patients and to control the course of
therapy in severe
inflammations. There are also few reliable parameters differentiating acute
bacterial infection from other types of
inflammation. Most of the presently used indicators of the inflammatory response, like body temperature, white cell count, erythrocyte sedimentation rate or
C reactive protein are unspecific parameters with changing reliability.
Procalcitonin is a diagnostic parameter of
bacterial infections with systemic reaction of the organism. It is an innovative diagnostic parameter with feature different from other presently available indicators of the inflammatory response. The incidence of noninfectious
systemic inflammatory response syndrome associated with
coronary artery bypass surgery and the potential role of several inflammatory parameters as early markers of pulmonary dysfunction induced by
cardiopulmonary bypass were investigated.
Procalcitonin seems to be appropriate parameter indicating the early development of severe noninfectious
systemic inflammatory response syndrome and for predicting pulmonary dysfunction secondary to
cardiopulmonary bypass. Hence, the review of the data of different authors may lead to the conclusion that because of wide spectrum of indications
procalcitonin concentration can be used for differential diagnosis of bacterial versus non-bacterial
inflammation, as monitoring parameter in
critically ill patients, the course of disease, treatment control evaluating the effectiveness of antibacterial treatment, for evaluation of high risk patients to see if there are no postoperative bacterial complications as a prognostic
indicator.