Procalcitonin (PCT)-guided algorithm reduces length of antibiotic treatment in surgical intensive care patients with severe sepsis: results of a prospective randomized study

Background Adequate indication and duration of administration are central issues of modern antibiotic treatment in intensive care medicine. The biochemical variable procalcitonin (PCT) is known to indicate systemically relevant bacterial infections with high accuracy. In the present study, we aimed...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Langenbeck's archives of surgery 2009-03, Vol.394 (2), p.221-226
Main Authors: Schroeder, S., Hochreiter, M., Koehler, T., Schweiger, A.-M., Bein, B., Keck, F. S., von Spiegel, T.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Abdominal Surgery
Aged
Aged, 80 and over
Algorithms
Anti-Bacterial Agents - administration & dosage
C-Reactive Protein - metabolism
Calcitonin - blood
Calcitonin Gene-Related Peptide
Cardiac Surgery
Controlled Prospective Clinical Trials
Critical Care
Drug Administration Schedule
Female
General Surgery
Hospital Mortality
Humans
Length of Stay
Male
Medicine
Medicine & Public Health
Middle Aged
Postoperative Complications - blood
Postoperative Complications - drug therapy
Predictive Value of Tests
Prospective Studies
Protein Precursors - blood
Sepsis - blood
Sepsis - drug therapy
Sepsis - mortality
Thoracic Surgery
Traumatic Surgery
Vascular Surgery
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Background Adequate indication and duration of administration are central issues of modern antibiotic treatment in intensive care medicine. The biochemical variable procalcitonin (PCT) is known to indicate systemically relevant bacterial infections with high accuracy. In the present study, we aimed to investigate the clinical usefulness of PCT for guiding antibiotic treatment in surgical intensive care patients with severe sepsis. Patients and methods Patients were randomly assigned to a PCT-guided or a control group requiring antibiotic treatment. All patients received a calculated antibiotic regimen according to the presumed microbiological spectrum. In the PCT-guided group, antibiotic treatment was discontinued if clinical signs of infection improved and the PCT value was either
ISSN:1435-2443
1435-2451
DOI:10.1007/s00423-008-0432-1