CSCC Webinar Lectureship on Critical Care Medicine
Thursday March 22, 2018
11:00 PT / 12:00 MT / 13:00 CT / 14:00 ET / 15:00 AT / 16:00 NL
Sponsored by
Procalcitonin: Should your hospital use it?
Speaker:
Mark Downing
Head of Infectious Diseases and Antimicrobial Stewardship Officer
Saint Joseph’s Health Centre, Toronto
Procalcitonin has been studied extensively as a biomarker for bacterial infections, in particular pneumonia and sepsis. Some randomized controltrials and meta-analyses suggest that procalcitonin-guided care can reduce antimicrobial use and even patient mortality. Some current guidelines recommend its routine use as part of antimicrobial stewardship programs and in clinical decision making for certain infections. However there still exists some controversy over procalcitonin’s clinical utility, especially in the’real world’.
At the conclusion of this session, participants will be able to:
(1) Understand how procalcitonin can guide clinical decision making for patients with suspected bacterial infections
(2) Understand what may cause a false positive and false negative result
(3) Understand the evidence for using procalcitonin to guide therapy in sepsis and respiratory tract infections
(4) Understand the limitations of using procalcitonin in the’real world’
Mark Downing is the Head of lnfectious Diseases and Medical Director of the Antimicrobial-Stewardship Program at Saint Joseph’s Health Centre in Toronto. He completed his medical degree at Dalhousie University, followed by lnternal Medicine at the University of Ottawa and a fellowship in lnfectious Diseases at the University of Toronto. He is also a graduate of the Rotman School of Management Advancei Health Leadership Program. His primary interests include innovating within the field of antimicrobial stewardship and developing collaborations with multidisciplinary teams to provide the best care for patients with infections.
There is no charge to attend this lecture but it is necessary to register