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Topics:
General Internal Medicine • Infectious Disease • Pulmonology • Critical Care • Hospital Medicine • Primary Care • General Primary Care • General Hospital Medicine
What is your preferred laboratory test to assess treatment response or infection resolution in patients with bacterial pneumonia?
For example, do you find trending WBC, procalcitonin, CRP, etc., more or less helpful?
Answer from: at Community Practice
I don't generally check a laboratory test to assess resolution. I go more by their improved clinical status and seeing them get back to baseline oxygen status. If I am trending a WBC or procal, I do like to see it trend down, but it's not the only lab I hang my hat on to decide if someone has resolv...
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Answer from: at Community Practice
The criteria for transition from IV to PO antibiotics and hospital discharge in CAP are all based on clinical improvement. There are no recommendations for follow-up laboratory studies, which can lag behind clinical resolution and result in increased cost, increased LOS, and additional unnecessary t...
Comments
at University of Colorado
Really appreciate the discussion here by you and @...
Really appreciate the discussion here by you and @...
at Yale School of Medicine/Yale-New Haven Hospital
Thanks for your input, @Jason! My clinical philoso...
Thanks for your input, @Jason! My clinical philoso...
at University of Colorado
Makes sense and definitely agree on all points!
Makes sense and definitely agree on all points!
Answer from: at Academic Institution
Oxygen level, vitalsThe 2009 British Thoracic Society guidelines for the management of community-acquired pneumonia suggest that chest radiograph and hospitalization be considered for outpatients with pneumonia who fail to improve after 48 hours of treatment.In practice, I find it helpful to check C...