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Can C-reactive protein and white blood cell count alone rule out an urgent condition in acute abdominal pain?

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Abstract

Up to 10 % of all patients at the Emergency Department present for acute abdominal pain. The C-reactive protein (CRP) and white blood cell (WBC) are routinely determined as part of the workup of patients with abdominal pain. Three large prospective cohort studies comprising a total of 2961 adult patients with acute abdominal pain were selected. CRP levels and WBC counts were compared between patients with urgent and nonurgent final diagnoses. These studies conclude that the laboratory values individually are weak discriminators and cannot be used as a triage instrument in the selection of patients with acute abdominal pain requiring additional diagnostic tests.

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References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. SOC Medicina d’Urgenza e Pronto Soccorso AOU S. Maria della Misericordia, Udine, UD, Italy

    Ciro Paolillo & Ilenia Spallino

Authors
  1. Ciro Paolillo
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  2. Ilenia Spallino
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Gruppo di Autoformazione Metodologica (GrAM)

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Correspondence to Ciro Paolillo.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Statement of human and animal rights

All procedures performed in the study involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. This article does not contain any studies with animal performed by any of the author.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Paolillo, C., Spallino, I. & Gruppo di Autoformazione Metodologica (GrAM). Can C-reactive protein and white blood cell count alone rule out an urgent condition in acute abdominal pain?. Intern Emerg Med 11, 141–142 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11739-015-1333-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11739-015-1333-2

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