The Role of Procalcitonin in Antibiotic Therapy

The pro calcitonin level can be used to determine whether or not a patient should take antibiotics. A pilot study is looking at blinding physicians so that they don't know if patients are getting better by stopping the antibiotics. Staph aureus you'll find growing from everywhere grows like a weed and it takes forever to clear whereas some of the other bacteria clear very quickly. So I think we have to start tailoring our antibiotics to in fact in fact what's happening and give clinicians a tool that they can do that safely and confidently with based on what Pro calcitonin tells them.