Workshop at EuroMedLab 2017

State of the art Procalcitonin testing in the laboratory: Matching the needs of the clinical departments by choosing the right assay

Thermo Fisher Scientific Workshop at EuroMedLab 2017 (22. IFCC-EFLM), Athens, Greece (June 14, 2017)

Chairman and Speakers

Chairman

Specialist in Laboratory Medicine in 2005 from the Catholic University of Louvain, Brussels, Belgium.
Pr. D. Gruson fulfilled is PhD thesis entitled “Regulation and Physiopathology of Urotensin II and Urocortin in Congestive Heart Failure” in November 2011. He took his position at the Department of Laboratory Medicine of the St-Luc University Hospital in 2008. He is now associated laboratory director and leading Endocrine Biology. He is also member of the research unit on Endocrinolgy Diabetes and Nutrition of the Catholic University of Louvain.
Pr. D. Gruson has published numerous articles in several international peer-reviewed journals. Pr. D. Gruson is board member of the Belgian Society of Laboratory Medicine and of the French Society of Laboratory Medicine. Pr. D. Gruson is also a member of the committee on distance learning of the International Federation of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine (IFCC), a member of the IFCC task force for young scientists (Chair between 2010 and 2012 and now consultant), a member of the Endocrinology division of the American Association of Clinical Chemistry (AACC).

Speakers

Pierre Hausfater, Paris, France: The clinical perspective: Procalcitonin testing for rapid detection of bacterial infection and antibiotic stewardship Clinical cut-offs and algorithms

Pierre Hausfater has received his MD degree with internal medicine specialization in 1996. After three years chief resident successively in infectious disease intensive care unit (Bichat Hospital, Paris) and internal medicine (Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, auto-immune diseases), he has been trained in emergency medicine and joined in 1999 the ED of Pitié-Salpêtrière (the biggest of APHP hospital network). He received his biochemistry PhD degree in 2007 (Université Paris V), working on the sepsis biomarker procalcitonin in emergency setting. His research fields have focused on the usefulness and implementation of biomarkers in the ED, on heatstroke and on the pathophysiology of sepsis. His main concern is to study the place of diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers, in order to optimize the patient’s workflow and turnaround time in the ED while ensuring the quality and security of care.

Ferruccio Ceriotti, Milan, Italy: PCT assays – Can they all use the same clinical cut-offs? A critical appraisal

Ferruccio Ceriotti, MD is deputy Director of the Service of Laboratory Medicine of San Raffaele Hospital in Milan. He is Director of the Laboratory for Standardization in Clinical Chemistry of the same Institution and responsible for quality management and quality assurance of the laboratory. He has been chairman of the IFCC Committee on Reference Intervals and Decision Limits (C-RIDL) and of the IFCC Committee on Reference System for Enzymes (C-RSE). He is chair of the EFLM Working Group on Harmonisation of the total testing process and of the EFLM Task and Finish Group on Allocation of laboratory tests to different models for performance specifications. Dr. Ceriotti is the Past President of SIBioC, the Italian Society of Clinical Biochemistry and Clinical Molecular Biology. Dr. Ceriotti has published 171 manuscripts, 108 in peer reviewed International Journals with Impact Factor.

Learning objectives

After this session, participants will be able to:

Understand the way Procalcitonin is used to support clinical decisions in the hospital departments.
Know which clinical cut-offs and algorithms are relevant and how they are used
Understand the impact of the technical quality of PCT assays for the clinical utility of the marker
Recognize the critical performance criteria for procalcitonin tests and how to assess them before introducing a test into clinical routine

Session overview

Early detection and treatment of bacterial infection is crucial for more judicious use of antibiotics as well as better outcome. Procalcitonin (PCT) has become a marker of broad routine use, both for differential diagnosis of bacterial infection as well as for antibiotic stewardship. Depending on the clinical background and setting various PCT cut-offs and algorithms have been established and validated in clinical studies. Particularly for guidance of antibiotic treatment a significant number of randomized controlled interventional trials have been published demonstrating that PCT-based algorithms can be used to safely guide prescription and duration of AB treatment on a patient-individual base. Today a range of PCT assays is available in the market raising the question for the laboratory to which extend it is possible to transfer the clinical cut-offs established mainly with B·R·A·H·M·S PCT sensitive KRYPTOR when other assays are used. The session will provide an overview on the assay performance aspects that are of particular relevance for the clinical use of the marker procalcitonin and how to test the utility of other available tests before introducing into clinical practice.