When looking at labs, I always look only at trends over time, never values in isolation, including all the following times:

Admission
During a hospitalization
In the outpatient setting

Which organism tends to have higher resistance overall to doxycycline?

This is well-known in clinical medicine, but just to list it explicitly (because it can sometimes be confusing):

WBC counts which are considered inflammatory in different body fluids:

Urine: >5-10
CSF: >5
Joints: >2,000
Ascitic fluid: >500 (and >250 PMNs)

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I AM HUMBLED BY MY INFECTIOUS DISEASE COLLEAUGES

Wendy Stead

When I trained in the Toronto in the late 1980s, it was customary to call in the ID service to see the most difficult to diagnose patients, whether or not they had an infectious etiology.

This is well-known in clinical medicine, but just to list it explicitly (because it can sometimes be confusing):

WBC counts which are considered inflammatory in different body fluids:

Urine: >5-10
CSF: >5
Joints: >2,000
Ascitic fluid: >500 (and >250 PMNs)

It is imp for us as medical educators to differentiate between management decisions based on:

(1) Strong evidence

Vs

(2) Historical approaches/gestalt/pathophysiological reasoning

Many times we use (2) b/c (1) is not available, but explicitly pointing this out is very imp.

Bits and Pieces:

Simple cystitis typically does not cause fever or other systemic signs and symptoms of infection. UTI with a fever usually implies upper-tract urinary tract disease, obstruction, or prostatitis (in men). Credit Prathit Kulkarni, MD #PhunQuiz

Simple but important IM tip:

When calculating the anion gap, remember to adjust for low albumin.

For every 1 g/dL that albumin is below 4, the expected normal AG is decreased by 2.5.

Ex: If the calculated AG is 13 and the albumin is 2, the corrected true AG is actually 18.

It is imp for us as medical educators to differentiate between management decisions based on:

(1) Strong evidence

Vs

(2) Historical approaches/gestalt/pathophysiological reasoning

Many times we use (2) b/c (1) is not available, but explicitly pointing this out is very imp.

Simple but important IM tip:

When calculating the anion gap, remember to adjust for low albumin.

For every 1 g/dL that albumin is below 4, the expected normal AG is decreased by 2.5.

Ex: If the calculated AG is 13 and the albumin is 2, the corrected true AG is actually 18.