Sepsis management has been emphasized due to the high hospitalization rate, mortality, and costs associated with sepsis. The latest guidelines for diagnosis and treatment of sepsis recommend using procalcitonin test, when determining whether to discontinue the use of antibiotics for patients who do not experience secondary infections following initial resuscitation of sepsis. Since unnecessary use of antibiotics can be minimized by using procalcitonin test, reduction in antibiotics-related complications, and further, effectiveness in reducing medical costs can be expected. However, there are no comparative studies on Korean patients with regards to this subject matter and economic evaluations on reduction in antibiotics treatment duration based on procalcitonin levels are also lacking.

Therefore, it is necessary to generate scientific evidence that procalcitonin test can safely reduce the duration of antibiotics treatment and whether this approach is feasible economically by identifying the effectiveness of procalcitonin test as an indicator to determine the treatment course of antibiotics in sepsis suspected or confirmed patients without secondary infections in Korea.

This study aimed to evaluate the clinical effectiveness on determining discontinuation of antibiotics based on procalcitonin levels in sepsis suspected patients and to conduct an economic analysis in order to provide evidence for policy- and decision-making related to procalcitonin test.