Figure 1
From: Procalcitonin for diagnosis of infection and guide to antibiotic decisions: past, present and future
Available evidence concerning PCT in different infections derived from observational and randomized-controlled intervention studies. While for some infections, intervention studies have investigated benefit and harm of using PCT for antibiotic decisions (right side), for other infections only results from diagnostic (observation) studies are available with mixed results (left side). Abbreviations: PCT, procalcitonin. + moderate evidence in favor of PCT; ++ good evidence in favor of PCT; +++ strong evidence in favor of PCT; ? evidence in favor or against the use of PCT still undefined