Mohammad Fandi Alnader, Haifa Ahmad Dasoky, Nisreen Al Hamiedeen.
Is C-reactive protein a valuable marker for severe bacterial infection?.
Rawal Med J Jan ;37(2):152-4.

Objective: To asses the values of C-reactive protein (CRP) in predicting sever bacterial infection in febrile children admitted to Prince Ali Hospital. Patients and Methods: A prospective study was conducted in 900 patients aged one month to six years who presented to the emergency department with fever of 38.5c or more. Two hundred patients fulfilled the criteria of admission to the pediatrics department. CRP, complete blood count (CBC), chest x-ray, ESR, blood culture and urine culture were taken upon admission. Results: During the study period from April 2011 to September 2011, 200 patients were admitted to the hospital with fever. Twenty five patients out of 200 (12.5%) were diagnosed to have severe bacterial infection. All of these cases (100%) showed strongly positive CRP and 88% were less than one year of age. The rest of the patients (175 patients, 87.5%) had non-severe bacterial infection. The most common diagnoses were pharyngiotonsilitis, otitis media and gastroenteritis. Among those with non-severe bacterial infection, only 48 (27%) patients had positive CRP. Other laboratory data like ESR and white blood cell (WBC) were not significant, as only 19 (9.5%) patients showed high ESR more than 15ml/hr, while only 26 (13%) showed elevated WBC more than 10,000/mm3 among all the patients in both groups. Conclusion: CRP was a valuable marker in predicting severe bacterial infection in children below one year of age, and it performed better than WBC and ESR. (Rawal Med J 2012;37:152-154).

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