Do you routinely check Infliximab levels on day 3 with patients admitted with acute severe ulcerative colitis?
The question implies that the patient has received the first induction dose of IFX just three days earlier. If that is the case, day 3 seems too soon to check a level. Normally, we might check a trough level just before the second dose in two weeks. If the level is low, we would increase the second ...
Conceptually, while this is an important concept, from a practical standpoint, most hospitals do not have a point-of-care IFX assay that can provide levels right away. Most IFX levels in the real world take around a week to come back, which makes that not impactful from a clinical standpoint in acut...
I am going to assume, as Dr. @Dr. First Last mentioned, that the patient received an infusion of 5 mg/kg while an inpatient 3 days ago. If the patient has had a clinical response (significant decrease in the number of bowel movements, bleeding) and the CRP has dropped as well, then it is unclear tha...