Research Of Procalcitonin In The Diagnosis Of Septic Knee Arthritis

OBJECTIVE:Recently, septic knee arthritis is diagnosed in most cases, by a detailed history and clinical symptoms, a careful examination, imaging, white blood cell (WBC), erythroeyte sedimentation rate (ESR), C-reactive protein (CRP), blood and synovial fluid culture. However, none of the test results have both high sensitivity and specificity. The aim of our study will discuss a method of simple, rapid, high sensitive and special in diagnosing septic knee arthritis.METHODS:The outpatient, hospital thirty-three patients, including16and17septic(The trial groups) and non-septic arthritis(the controlled group), were enrolled in the study. The serum and synovial fluid markers [procalcitonin, serum C-reactive protein, erythrocyte sedimentationrate, serum and joint fluid white blood cell counts] were compared in septic and inflammatory arthritis.RESULTS:Patients with septic knee arthritis had significantly elevated levels of synovial fluid procalcitonin,C-reactive protein,erythrocyte sedimentation rate and white blood cell counts in comparison with the inflammatory arthritis group (P<0.05). Serum procalcitonin level does not differ among the two groups. Compared with other markers, the Youden index of synovial fluid procalcitonin is the highest.In a receiver operatng characteristic curve analysis, synovial fluid PCT preformed best in distinguishing between septic and non-septic arthritis,the area under the curve is0.904.CONCLUSION:Synovial fluid procalcitonin is overexpression in infectious septic knee arthritis, while serum procalcitonin lowexpression. Our study suggests that PCT a good auxiliary diagnostic marker of simple, rapid, sensitive, specific in discriminating the septic and non-septic arthritis.