Procalcitonin as a Reliable Biomarker in Acute Coronary Syndromes: What Is Its Role?

We read with interest the paper by Bektas et al. showing that point-of-care testing for procalcitonin (PCT) had poor diagnostic accuracy for predicting myocardial infarction in a series of 141 patients admitted to the Emergency Department (ED) with chest pain of presumed ischemic origin (1). In these patients, procalcitonin values had lower sensitivity, specificity, and positive and negative likelihood ratios with respect to traditional cardiac markers such as high-sensitivity C-reactive protein, creatine kinase-MB, and myoglobin levels. Though this is one of the first studies evaluating the diagnostic role of PCT in the ED, in our opinion, some aspects deserve further discussion.