1. Procalcitonin (PCT)-guided algorithm reduces length of antibiotic treatment in surgical intensive care patients with severe sepsis: results of a prospective randomized study
- Author
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Marcel Hochreiter, Stefan Schroeder, T. Koehler, Berthold Bein, F. S. Keck, T. von Spiegel, and A.-M. Schweiger
- Subjects
Calcitonin ,Male ,medicine.medical_specialty ,Critical Care ,medicine.drug_class ,Calcitonin Gene-Related Peptide ,Antibiotics ,Procalcitonin ,Drug Administration Schedule ,law.invention ,Postoperative Complications ,Randomized controlled trial ,law ,Predictive Value of Tests ,Internal medicine ,Sepsis ,parasitic diseases ,Medicine ,Humans ,Hospital Mortality ,Prospective Studies ,Protein Precursors ,Prospective cohort study ,Adverse effect ,Intensive care medicine ,Aged ,Aged, 80 and over ,business.industry ,Vascular surgery ,Length of Stay ,Middle Aged ,Anti-Bacterial Agents ,C-Reactive Protein ,Predictive value of tests ,Surgery ,Female ,business ,hormones, hormone substitutes, and hormone antagonists ,Algorithms ,Abdominal surgery - Abstract
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 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
- Published
- 2008