Clinical application of Procalcitonin in neonatal infection

Objective To evaluate procalcitonin(PCT) applied in the diagnosis of neonatal infection.Methods The selection of 138 cases of neonatal infectious diseases whcih were collected from January 2012 to december 2012 were divided into 55 cases of severe infection group and 83 cases of general infection group two groups according to the infection severity score,electing 50 cases of non-infected newborns as the control group.3 groups of the level of serum PCT were tested by Semiquantitative immune chromatography,compared to the level of serum C-reactive protein(CRP).Results The level of serum PCT in severe infection group was significantly higher than the other two groups's(P0.05 or P0.01),the level of serum PCT in the general infection group was higher than the control group's(P0.05);The sensitivity of PCT and CRP for diagnosis of neonatal infection was 87.3% and 56.4% respectively,there was no significant difference(P0.05).Conclusions PCT is more sensitive than CRP and neonatal infection can be diagnosed and treated much earlier,more sensitively by using the detection of PCT.