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Oh my good friend, #procalcitonin, we are doing you so wrong. Sometimes we ignore you to stop antibiotics, sometimes we use you inappropriately to differentiate between bacterial and viral infections and end up under treating bacterial infections. I plan on clearing up a bunch of confusion within the next few months but this shall be article one on the subject. This is where I do feel that checking procalcitonin levels is actually useful and now there’s additional data to support it. Trending it to see if you can discontinue antibiotics early, much to the chagrin of some of my #infectiousdisease colleagues, is a place where it is definitely useful. The caveat is that it has to be elevated in the first place. I’m sure we’ve all seen septic patients with a negative procal at this stage of our careers, as frustrating as that may be. Those are the nuisances of these tests that, if employed correctly, will make you one of the Masters of the Universe. Sorry, my nerd brain is on full swing this morning.
-EJ
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