Procalcitonin is a biomarker of bacterial infection available for emergency departments (ED) for the diagnosis and the severity assessment of sepsis. Recently, a point of care (POC) reader, PCT directÒ, has been developed which allow PCT measurement on 20µL whole venous or capillary blood, with a measuring range of 0.1 – 10 µg/L and a time to result of 20 minutes. In an international multicenter prospective study conducted in 3 EDs in Europe in consecutive patients with suspicion of infection undergoing routine care PCT measurement were compared to lab based references methods. 316 patients were included over a 3-month consecutive period. The correlation between capillary or venous whole blood and the reference method was excellent: r2=0.98 and 0.99, sensitivity 0.85 and 0.93, specificity 0.96 and 0.98, concordance 0.92 and 0.96 respectively at a 0.25 µg/L threshold. No significant bias was observed. Mean time to result was dramatically improved with PCT directÒ : 25 min versus 136 min for central lab (ranging from 30 min to 7.28 hours). In current practice in ED, PCT directÒ offers an alternative for a 25 minutes time to result PCT measurement with a good correlation with the reference method.
