Introduction: Differentiating infectious and non-infectious diabetic foot ulcers and determining its severity based on clinical finding is challenging for most physicians. In this study we tried to investigate diagnostic value of procalcitonin level for diabetic foot ulcers and compare it with other customary inflammatory biomarkers. Material and methods: fiftyseven diabetic patients with foot ulcers, who were intended in endocrinology clinic of Imam Khomeini hospital were selected and classified based on infectious foot ulcer (N=37) versus non-infectious ulcer (N=20). Serum levels of procalcitonin and White blood cell (WBC) count were measured concomitant with recording demographic data. The results were analyzed. Results: the mean age of the patients was 68.5 ± 4.9 years; the diabetes disease duration was 11.6 ± 0.46 years. The serum procalcitonin level and WBC count in diabetics with infectious ulcer were higher (p<0.05). The sensitivity and specificity of procalcitonin in diagnosis of infectious diabetic foot ulcer were measured 23.3% and 100% respectively. There was no statistically meaningful intergroup difference according to CRP level. Conclusions: This study showed procalcitonin has high specificity for diagnosis of infectious diabetic foot ulcers, so it could be used in the setting of suspicious infected diabetic foot ulcer but due to its low sensitivity, it is not useful screening test.
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The Annals of Medical and Health Sciences Research is a bi-monthly multidisciplinary medical journal.