The objective of this study was to assess and to compare the time course of the immunological signaling marker IL-6 and the non-immunological marker PCT in surgical patients with local and systemic bacterial infections and with multiple trauma of well-defined severity. 45 surgical and 26 intensive care patients were enrolled in this collaborative study. We analyzed IL-6 and PCT blood concentrations under the different experimental conditions with Cochran’s Qˆ -criterion for testing null hypotheses. For the surgical patients with local infections and with systemic infections, we did not find a significant decline of IL-6 in the time course at the confidence intervals 0.999, 0.990, and 0.950. No differences in PCT concentrations were found for the various experimental conditions. The time course of IL-6 did not change significantly with medium and high severity trauma, whereas PCT declined over time with significance levels 0.990 and 0.950. The measurement of IL-6 is predominantly a research tool at present. There are no absolute indications for routine measurements. Regarding PCT, our results do not point to this marker as a valid predictor of bacterial infections including sepsis during the early period after trauma.
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