Background: community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) is one of
the most common pediatric diseases. Early and accurate diagnosis
of CAP in children has a great value in avoiding
pneumonia complications and decreasing rates of pneumonia related
mortality. Aim of the work: this study aimed to investigate the role
of procalcitonin (PCT), C-reactive protein (CRP) and white blood
cells (WBCs) count in diagnosis of childhood CAP. Patients and
Methods: 90 infants and children aged from 2 months to 5 years
(60 months) were included in this study. They were divided into two
groups group I: 60 patients hospitalized for CAP and group II: 30,
age and sex matched, healthy controls attending the outpatient
clinics of the same hospitals for routine care. Chest x-ray was
performed to the patients group only, while WBCs
count, serum CRP, serum procalcitonin were applied to both
patients and controls. Results: WBCs count, neutrophil percentage, CRP
level, procalcitonin concentration were higher in the patients group than the controls with high
statistically significant difference (13.4±3.4 vs 8.3±1.7) (54.5±15.4 vs 37.2±6.7) (57.5±30.1 vs
5.7±5.6) (0.5±0.47 vs 0.07±0.04) respectively. Using the AUROC test WBCs count at cut-off
value >10.5 x103
cell/mm3
, CRP at cut-off value >20 mg/L, procalcitonin at cut-off value >0.17
ng/ml could predict presence of CAP in the patients with 83.3%, 85%, 86.7% sensitivity and
76.6%, 100%, 96.7% specificity respectively. Conclusion: evaluation of WBCs count, serum
CRP and serum procalcitonin concentration has an important role in diagnosis of CAP in infants
and children |
