The importance of procalcitonin in the diagnosis and prognosis of patients with dyspnea in the emergency department Is procalcitonin gold standart in pneumonia?

Aim: Dyspnea is a common problem in emergency services worldwide. Bacterial pneumonia is a common etiology in patients with acute dyspnea causing mor-bidity and mortality. Early initiation of appropriate antibiotic therapy reduces mortality. However, it is difficult to diagnose pneumonia with symptoms similar to acute heart failure and acute exacerbation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and without definitive diagnostic testing. For this, it is thought that the use of a biomarker that can diagnose pneumonia at the time of admission to the hospital would be clinically useful. Material and Methods: Patients who came to the emergency department with shortness of breath were analyzed retrospectively. Three hundred patients were examined. Serum procalcitonin values of patients diagnosed with pneumonia by chest radiography or thorax CT were compared with other patients. Patients discharged from the emergency department or hospitalized were classified as a good clinical outcome group, patients who were intubated, in need of intensive care, or who died were classified as a poor clinical outcome group, and procalcitonin values were compared. The data were evaluated using the SPSS Statistics Standard statistical package program. A p <0.001 value was considered statistically significant. Results: In patients presenting with dyspnea, pneumonia (150), COPD exacerbation (30), lower respiratory tract infection (LRTI) (18), acute coronary syndrome (ACS) (27), and acute heart failure (AHF) (76) were diagnosed. The PCT values of the patients diagnosed with pneumonia were significantly higher than the other groups (p <0.001). In terms of white blood cell (WBC) values, there was no significant difference between pneumonia patients and other patients. When the neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) was examined, it was found to be significantly higher in pneumonia patients (p <0.001). When we examined the progno-sis of pneumonia patients, the PCT values of the patients with a poor prognosis were found to be significantly higher (p <0.001). Discussion: We have seen that PCT has an important role in the diagnosis and prognosis of pneumonia in patients admitted to the emergency department with shortness of breath