The Contribution of Procalcitonin, C-Reactive Protein and Interleukin-6 in the Diagnosis and Prognosis of Surgical Sepsis: An Observational and Statistical Study

BACKGROUND: Sepsis affects over 30 million people worldwide each year, causing approximately 6 million deaths. Challenges in clinical diagnosis and the need for an early diagnosis to prevent mortality due to sepsis have led to dependence on inflammatory biomarkers like Procalcitonin (PCT), C-reactive protein (CRP), and Interleukin-6 (IL-6). OBJECTIVE: This study was performed to observe the contribution of inflammatory biomarkers in the diagnosis and prognosis of patients with surgical sepsis. METHODS: We performed a retrospective observational study in a Clinical Emergency Hospital, which included a number of 125 patients with surgical sepsis admitted between January 2020 and December 2021. The patients were included in the study based on the Sepsis-3 definition. PCT, CRP, IL-6, Sepsis-related Organ Failure Assessment (SOFA) score, Charlson Comorbidity Index (CCI), the time up to surgery, the days of treatment in Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and the total days of hospitalization had been statistically analyzed. RESULTS: The mean age of all patients was 65.14 years. The mean value in all patients for PCT was 20.08 ng/mL, for CRP was 175.42 mg/l, and for IL-6 was 799.6 pg/mL. The strongest correlation between biomarkers was between CRP and IL-6 (r = 0.425; p < 0.0001). Of all biomarkers, the CRP correlated the strongest with patient outcomes (r = 0.544; p < 0.0001). The area under curve (AUC) for the mean values of the inflammatory biomarkers was calculated and the best diagnostic performance was for CRP with 0.816 (95% CI: 0.744–0.887). CONCLUSION: CRP and IL-6 were the most efficient in sepsis diagnosis. The association of PCT, CRP and IL-6 has increased the range of certainty in sepsis diagnosis. CRP was the most efficient biomarker in the prognosis of sepsis.