About this episode
Author: Michael Hunt, MD Educational Pearls: As many as 20% of women in assisted living have asymptomatic bacteriuria This can present a diagnostic conundrum when seeing these patients in the emergency department, particularly for altered mental status and deciding whether to treat True diagnosis of UTI in the emergency department is difficult as true diagnoses required culture results and repeated positive samples Procalcitonin is an emerging biomarker that may be helpful in determining the presence of infection References: Cortes-Penfield NW, Trautner BW, Jump RLP. Urinary Tract Infection and Asymptomatic Bacteriuria in Older Adults. Infect Dis Clin North Am. 2017 Dec;31(4):673-688. doi: 10.1016/j.idc.2017.07.002. Review. PubMed PMID: 29079155; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC5802407. Huang DT, Angus DC, Chang CH, Doi Y, Fine MJ, Kellum JA, Peck-Palmer OM, Pike F, Weissfeld LA, Yabes J, Yealy DM; ProACT Investigators.. Design and rationale of the Procalcitonin Antibiotic Consensus Trial (ProACT), a multicenter randomized trial of procalcitonin antibiotic guidance in lower respiratory tract infection. BMC Emerg Med. 2017 Aug 29;17(1):25. doi: 10.1186/s12873-017-0138-1. PubMed PMID: 28851296; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC5576372. Summarized by Erik Verzemnieks, MD