Infection is one the most troublesome complications after surgery and so early detection of infection is necessary for the proper treatment.
It has been generally accepted that for the early detection of postopertive infection it is important to observe clinical sympoms and signs of patients and to check leukocyte conut, erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) and C-reactive
protein(CRP).
There have been some reports on evaluation of clinical significane of ESR and CRP in the various disease. But there were few papers about the relationship between postoperative infections and CRP levels in the field of orthopedic surgery.
We analyzed 20 patients who were infected and 20 patients who were non-infected after bone and joint surgery from Jan. 1989 to May. 1991 for the evaluation of the values of ESR and CRP levels at postoperative 3rd day, lst week, 2nd week, 3rd week
.
@ES The results were as follows:
@EN In the same number of cases, ESR increased to more than 100mm/hr and CRP increased to more than 10mg/dl least once at postopertive 3rd day, 1st week, 2nd week and 3rd week in both cases but CRP showed more rapid changes than ESR.
Thus, both ESR and CRP reached the high level (greater than 100mm/hr for ESR and greater than 10mg/dl for CRP) in response to acute trauma, infection and opertion. But CRP is more sensitive indicator as an acute phase reactant for postoperative
infection because CRP reacts more rapidly in acute phase and degree of changes in CRP between infected and non-infected cases is greater than in ESR.
|