Speaker:
Lisa Johnson, PhD, DABCC. Assistant Professor. ARUP / University of Utah.
Dr. Johnson is a medical director in clinical chemistry at ARUP and an assistant professor in the Department of Pathology at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. She specializes in esoteric testing that includes non-infectious gastrointestinal assays, advanced lipid analyses, and maternal serum screening. She received her doctorate in chemistry from the University of Wisconsin- Madison, performed post-doctoral research at UCLA, and completed her clinical chemistry fellowship training at the University of Minnesota.
Overview:
Fecal calprotectin is an inflammatory marker measured in stool that aids in both screening and following patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Pancreatic elastase is an enzyme measured in stool to screen for exocrine pancreatic insufficiency. Both tests are increasingly ordered by gastroenterologists for patients with abdominal pain and diarrhea. This presentation will discuss both the clinical and analytical benefits and limitations of these two quantitative stool-based assays.
Objectives:
At the end of this activity, participants will be able to:
- Describe the clinical utility of fecal calprotectin and pancreatic elastase results.
- Identify some of the analytical challenges for quantitative measurements in stool.
- Discuss considerations for fecal calprotectin and pancreatic elastase assays.