Objectives: The aim was to assess the diagnostic and prognostic value of measuring pentraxin 3 (PTX3) together with C-reactive protein (CRP) in patients with ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP).
Background: The PTX3 values increase rapidly during multiple inflammatory conditions, but little is known about its characteristics in VAP.
Methods: Measurement of PTX3 and CRP levels in plasma from 136 consecutive patients receiving mechanical ventilation > 48 h in a prospective single center study.
Results: A PTX3 threshold of >16.43 ng/ml provided a specificity of 74.0% and a sensitivity of 68.6% for the diagnosis of VAP. PTX3 correlated with severity of sepsis and peaked earlier than CRP in patients with confirmed VAP. Multivariate Cox regression analysis showed PTX3 was the independent predictor for mortality of VAP.
Conclusions: PTX3 was not superior to CRP as a biomarker to diagnose VAP, but it was an early indicator of inflammation and had better prognostic value to predict mortality than CRP.
Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.