Purpose: The aims were to assess (1) the diagnostic value of serum procalcitonin (PCT) for acute pyelonephritis (APN) in infants and children with urinary tract infections (UTIs) and (2) to compare the performance of two commonly used cutoff values.
Methods: A meta-analysis of serum PCT in the diagnosis of APN among pediatrics with lower UTIs was conducted. The process of search strategy, publications selection and data analysis was in accordance with the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses guidelines.
Results: Eighteen high-quality studies with a total of 831 APN patients and 651 individuals with lower UTIs were analyzed. The overall performance of serum PCT ≥ 0.5 ng/mL was as follows: pooled sensitivity of 0.86 (95 % CI 0.73-0.93), pooled specificity of 0.76 (95 % CI 0.66-0.83), DOR of 18.90 (95 % CI 6.78-52.71) and AUROC of 0.86 (95 % CI 0.83-0.89), with significant heterogeneity. However, use of 1.0 ng/mL as a cutoff value produced an improved specificity of 0.91 (95 % CI 0.86-0.94), a DOR of 55.06 (95 % CI 22.57-115.48) and an AUROC of 0.94 (95 % CI 0.92-0.96), without obvious heterogeneity.
Conclusion: In pediatrics with UTIs, the cutoff value of serum PCT, 1.0 ng/mL, has a preferable diagnostic performance compared with 0.5 ng/mL for APN. Additional prospective studies that propose an appropriate cutoff value and validate the performance of PCT for young with APN are needed in the future.
Keywords: Acute pyelonephritis; Diagnosis; Procalcitonin; Urinary tract infections.