Furthermore, non-survivors showed no decrease in PCT suggesting that pneumonia remained uncontrolled. Assessing adequacy of antimicrobial therapy was not part of the study hypothesis and would have been beyond the scope of this trial. However, PCT measurement offers the possibility of being a marker for monitoring therapeutic success or failure, since successful therapy is associated with a decrease in PCT levels. A PCT guided algorithm has been shown to reduce duration of antibiotic therapy without affecting patients' safety [22, 44] .