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Early in training, physicians develop a sixth sense for spotting serious illness (or at least the good ones do). Not surprisingly, few researchers have evaluated exactly how accurate this instinct is. An international team has now taken a stab at one aspect of the question.
During 3 months, the attending staff of two pediatric intensive care units were asked to estimate the likelihood (expressed as a percentage) of serious bacterial infection in each of 347 patients (e.g., "the likelihood of infection in patient X is 50%"). Estimates were updated daily, or when antibiotics were started, until blood-culture results were available or antibiotics were discontinued. Subsequently, the presence or absence of infection in each patient was retrospec…