الفهرس | Only 14 pages are availabe for public view |
Abstract Neonatal sepsis is one of the major health problems throughout the world. - Every year an estimated 30 million acquire infection, 1 – 2 millions of these died. - A variety of factors contributed to this serious disease including maternal risk factors as premature rupture of membrane, beside neonatal risk factors as prematurity and invasive procedures. - Unfortunately there is no single diagnostic curve which can reliably diagnose sepsis in the neonate except for blood culture, there for many diagnostic tests are utilized to diagnose or confirm sepsis. - PCT is a 14 – kDa protein encoded by the calc – 1 gene along with calcitonin and katacalcin, studies of its behavior in patients with sepsis have led to the proposal that it may be a useful marker of systemic bacterial infection with greater sensitivity than acute phase protein such as C-reactive protein. - In this work we tried to evaluate PCT serum level as a marker of neonatal sepsis. This study conducted on 60 neonates, 20 diagnosed as having proven sepsis by +ve clinical presentation, +ve haematological sepsis score and +ve blood culture, their age ranged between 3 – 14 days postnatally and their weight ranged between 2.5 – 3.2 kg. 20 diagnosed as having probably sepsis by +ve clinical presentation, +ve haematological sepsis score but with negative blood culture, their age ranged between 3 – 12 days postnatally and their weight range between 2.4 – 3.4 k.g . - The control group comprised 20 healthy neonates taken randomly from the out patient clinic of El-Khalifa hospital coming for first postnatal check up or for vaccination. - Both patients and control groups were subjected to full history taking, clinical examination and laboratory investigations including CBC with differential, CRP and measurement of PCT, patients also subjected to blood culture. |