Ghazal Ziaei
Mahmood Vessal
Noushin Afshar Moghaddam

Backgrounds and Objects:Pleural effusions occur in many benign and malignant diseases. The cytological diagnoses ofserous effusions are usually made by routine cytomorphology with certainty. However,overlapping cases sometimes exists between reactive mesothelial and adenocarcinoma.Therefore, the adoption of complementary techniques will increase the diagnostic accuracy.There is disagreement among researchers about superiority of biochemistry markers in thatcondition. One suggested biomarker is the measurement of the level of procalcitonin inserous fluids.Objective:Determining the diagnostic value of procalcitonin in differentiation betweenadenocarcinomatous and reactive pleural effusions.Materials and methods:This study was a descriptive -analytical study and performed on 60 fluidsamples that hadbeen collected frompleural fluids in cytology department of Al Zahra Hospital at IsfahanUniversity of Medical Sciences. The procalcitonin levelswere measured using immunefluorescent techniques (Mini- Vidas). Data were analyzed using SPSS software version 16.Results:The mean of procalcitonin in benign and malignant conditions were respectively, 0.062 and0.052(P value= 0.002)).There was no significant difference as far as the origin of theadenocarcinoma was concerned, however the highest value was obtained in lung cancers ascompared with the cancer of other organs(P value= 0.0469). In benign situations based on thecellular nature, a significantly higher value was seen in inflammatory effusions (Pvalue=0.04)).Conclusions:It seems that the measurement of procalcitonin in serous fluids is a useful marker fordiagnosis of inflammatory conditions, but it is not a crucial parameter for the differentiationof benign and malignant effusions and therefore it is not useful in clinical practice. Due topresence of controversial results for procalcitonin levels in serous fluid, we recommendfurther investigations using more samples.

Aspiration, pleural effusion, serous fluids, adenocarcinoma, procalcitonin