NCT00914550

Use Of Procalcitonin Level For Guidance of The Treatment of Suspected Community Acquired Pneumonia

• Status: Completed
• Phase: —
• Study type: Observational
• Enrollment: 47 (actual)
• Sponsor: Winthrop University Hospital · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

The purpose of the study is to learn if a blood test is helpful to the doctors in deciding whether you need antibiotic therapy for possible pneumonia. The blood test is called a Procalcitonin level and sometimes the test reflects infection with certain bacteria (germs). When the doctors learn the results of these blood tests, they may be able to stop some of the antibiotic medications that they may have given to the patients. The study is designed, so that on a randomized basis (50/50 chance) the results from measuring Procalcitonin will be given to the patients' doctor. When the doctor receives these results, he/she may use this information, along with other information, to decide whether to continue antibiotic therapy.

Detailed description

To evaluate the usefulness of serum Procalcitonin level measured to guide the antibiotic treatment of patients with radiographic lung infiltrates.The subjects involved in the study will be divided in two arms ,study arm where the caregivers will know the result of Procalcitonin level and they can change /withheld the antibiotic for the subjects.In other arm only investigators will know the Procalcitonin level. We expect to enroll 100 patients.

Conditions

• Pneumonia
• Radiographic Lung Infiltrates

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
OTHER	Procalcitonin level, caregiver informed	Procalcitonin levels will be measured and known by investigator, only 1/2 of the patients' caregivers will know the results of serial Procalcitonin levels. We will analyze the rate of antibiotic discontinuation for the two arms

Timeline

• Start date: 2009-06-01
• Primary completion: 2012-09-01
• Completion: 2012-09-01
• First posted: 2009-06-05
• Last updated: 2014-12-15

Locations

1 site across 1 country: United States