Diagnostic accuracy of elevated pro-calcitonin for predicting mortality in patients undergoing surgery for mechanical small bowel obstruction keeping actual mortality as gold standard.
Cross-sectional validation study assesses pro-calcitonin levels for predicting mortality in surgical patients, suggesting high specificity but low sensitivity.
Key Points
Elevated pro-calcitonin levels correlate with increased mortality risk in mechanical small bowel obstruction surgery.
The study found a mortality rate of 2.0% among 203 participants with a mean pro-calcitonin level of 11.09 ng/mL.
A pro-calcitonin threshold of 0.65 ng/mL showed high specificity at 89%, but low sensitivity at 25% for predicting death.
Combining pro-calcitonin with other diagnostic methods may improve sensitivity in predicting surgical outcomes.