Procalcitonin has surfaced in the wake of the fight against unnecessary antibiotic prescriptions. In hospitals, these antibiotics have developed so many resistant microbes that the transfer to mechanical ventilation in some places has become more dangerous than the underlying disease.
We have already discussed with you that pneumonia was previously not only bacterial, but also viral. When viral, antibiotics are not needed. But it is difficult to distinguish between pathogens. The bacteria can be sown in a microbiology laboratory, but it takes time. And the patient is already bent over.
And now an analysis for procalcitonin appeared, with the help of which it was possible to almost halve the number of antibiotics.
As the name suggests, procalcitonin is a precursor to the thyroid hormone calcitonin. Calcitonin is a smart way to drive calcium into crumbling bones in osteoporosis.
His predecessor is also not a bastard. It is very sensitive to bacterial toxins and situations where the immune system is at war with bacteria.
Such neural procalcitonin is not limited to the thyroid gland. Against the background of a bacterial infection, it appears everywhere in the body. So you can catch him with a blood test.
Procalcitonin reacts so quickly to bacteria that it rises in the blood after two hours. Well, if a patient has blood poisoning, then procalcitonin generally scales.
Interestingly, procalcitonin was conceived rather to avoid giving unnecessary antibiotics. That is, a patient with obvious bacterial pneumonia was checked every day or two, and at some point, when the procalcitonin fell, it was possible to understand that there was already enough.
And then a pandemic broke out, and procalcitonin began to be used in a new way. Now so many people have been hospitalized with viral pneumonia that it would have been abnormal for everyone to spill antibiotics. A hellish selection of evil microbes would begin. Therefore, procalcitonin began to be used when it was suspected that bacterial pneumonia had joined the viral pneumonia.
True, as far as I remember, initially it was about the fact that with severe covid procalcitonin will lie. But it looks like another use has been found for it. Now there is an idea to test procalcitonin several times before discharge. So that the patient does not return after a week with bacterial pneumonia.
Probably, after all these costs for covid, the search for procalcitonin in the blood does not seem as expensive as it used to be.
