Ingber Ross B, Alhammoud Abduljabbar, Murray Daniel P, Abraham Roby, Dixit Anant, Naziri Qais, Ahmed Ghalib, Paulino Carl B, Urban William P, Craig Chad, Maheshwari Aditya V, Diebo Bassel G
Orthopedics. 2018 May 1;41(3):e303-e309. doi: 10.3928/01477447-20180409-07. Epub 2018 Apr 16.
Procalcitonin is a serologic marker that increases in response to inflammatory stimuli, especially those of bacterial origin. Postoperative orthopedic periprosthetic infections are often difficult to diagnose. This study systematically reviewed the literature to evaluate the statistical measures of performance of procalcitonin as a marker of postoperative orthopedic infection. This study showed that procalcitonin has a weighted pooled sensitivity of 67.3%, specificity of 69.4%, positive likelihood ratio of 1.778, negative likelihood ratio of 0.423, and diagnostic odds ratio of 5.770. These results illustrate that procalcitonin is an effective serologic marker for postoperative bacterial infections. [Orthopedics. 2018; 41(3):e303-e309.].
