Clinical Significance Of PCT In Elderly Community-acquired Pneumonia Diagnosis And Patient’s Condition

As China gradually entered the aging society, elderly patients increase.Elderlycommunity-acquired pneumonia (CAP) becomes the common disease. Because elderlypatients are combined with one or more underlying diseases and pathogens show thediversity and complexity, the rapid development of lesions causes severe pneumoniawith high mortality. Therefore, early diagnosis and early treatment ofcommunity-acquired pneumonia in the elderly is a key to prognostic improvement. Howto quickly and accurately distinguish elderly CAP caused by a bacterial infection is veryimportant.Finding a biomarker to assess the severity of the infection and to guide theapplication of antibiotics are valuable in current clinical research. This paper is intendedto investigate the clinical significance of serum procalcitonin （PCT）in elderlycommunity-acquired pneumonia diagnosis and prognosis.Objective:To investigate the clinical value of serum PCT in diagnosis and prognosis ofthe elder community acquired pneumonia.Methods:Selected50elderly patients with a diagnosis of community acquiredpneumonia from the respiratory department and Respiratory Intensive Care Unit in theFirst Affiliated Hospital of Dalian Medical University between November2012andNovember2013.According to laboratory sputum culture results,the31patients whosesputum culture were positive as positive group of bacteria,and19patients whosesputum culture were negative as negative group of bacteria.Meanwhile collected15healthy elderly people as the control group. CRUB-65score were used to evaluate theseverity of positive group of bacteria, and the severity of serum PCT were comparedamong these different groups. Results:The level of serum PCT in these three groups was statistically difference(P<0.05). C-reactive protein(CRP),white blood cell (WBC) were of statisticallysignificant differences between positive group of bacteria and control group,andbetween negative group of bacteria and control group(P <0.05), but there were nosignificant differences between positive group of bacteria and negative group of bacteria(P>0.05). Percentage of neutrophils (NEU) was of statistically significant differencebetween positive group of bacteria and negative group of bacteria,and between positivegroup of bacteria and control group(P <0.05), but it was no sta tistic difference betweennegative group of bacteria and control group(P>0.05).Positive group of bacteria:In CRUB-65score, the serum PCT,CRP, WBC,NEU level insevere group were significantly higher than in moderate group, and they were higher inmoderate group when compared with mild group. The serum PCT was statisticallydifference between moderate group and mild group (P<0.05),and it was of statisticallysignificant difference between severe group and moderate group,and between severegroup and mild group (P <0.01).However CRP,WBC,NEU were no significantdifferences among these groups.(P>0.05).Conclusion:Detection of serum PCT has important clinical significance in severity ofthe elder community acquired pneumonia about common bacteria infection.