CRP and Sepsis: As shown in Table 3, patients with postoperative sepsis had significantly higher mean values of PCT, CRP, and IL-6 at all postoperative time points (p < 0.05). The difference was most pronounced for PCT, where mean POD 1 levels were 5.35 ± 3.86 ng/mL in septic patients versus 1.52 ± 0.19 ng/mL in non-septic individuals (p < 0.0001). CRP and IL-6 also demonstrated significant but less discriminative separation between the two groups.