Open AccessThe complete blood count to diagnose septic shock
Author(s) -
J Farkas
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
journal of thoracic disease
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.682
H-Index - 60
eISSN - 2077-6624
pISSN - 2072-1439
DOI - 10.21037/jtd.2019.12.63
Subject(s) - medicine , septic shock , white blood cell , complete blood count , shock (circulatory) , immunology , blood count , presentation (obstetrics) , lymphocyte , intensive care medicine , absolute neutrophil count , count data , sepsis , surgery , neutropenia , toxicity , statistics , mathematics , poisson distribution
The complete blood count has a longstanding role in the diagnosis of septic shock. Despite its limitations, this is a pragmatic tool because patients will generally have a blood count measured upon presentation to the hospital. Therefore, it is sensible to extract as much information from these values as possible. Although the white blood cell count continues to attract the most attention, it is the least useful. Emerging evidence suggests that emphasis should be shifted to the neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio (NLR) and perhaps the fraction of immune granulocytes.