Comparing procalcitonin to C-reactive protein, white blood cell and fever in diagnosis of ventriculostomy associated infection

Background: Procalcitonin is a glicopeptide of 116 amino acid and precursor of calcitonin hormone. At the present day procalcitonin take attention because of being specific to bacterial infection and also is a new indicator for infection which do not affected from viral infection and SIRS. The objective of this study was to show the effect of neurosurgical procedures to procalcitonin levels and to distinguish neurosurgical procedure inflammatory reaction from postsurgical associated infection.Materials and methods: We carried out our study in Çukurova University Neurosurgery department between January 2007- August 2007. 10 ventricular drainage and 17 ventriculoperitoneal shunt applied patients, total number of 27 patients was carried out in the study. One day preoperative and seven days postoperative values of procalcitonin, white blood cell, C-reactive protein and fever were investigated. Results were analyzed in SPSS 15.0 program.Results: In all patients according to preoperative values in postoperative first day fever was significantly higher.(p. 0:001) C-reactive protein exposed a peak level in the second day and a negative acceleration following the second day. We exposed as much as 3 times higher levels of c-reactive protein at the fifth day of postoperative surgery according to preoperative day. White blood cell levels exposed a increasing in the postoperative days like c-reactive protein but predicated a wavy kinetic. Procalcitonin exposed normal levels in infection free patients however in infection associated patients the levels were high.Conclusions: We may suggest procalcitonin is superior to other existing infection parameters because of not effecting from surgical associated inflamatuar response and a quicker response to routine used other parameters. We suggest that procalcitonin will be a safe and serious parameter in following neurosurgical associated systemic complications by results of new studies which includes more patients and different surgical procedures.