Hello, students. My name is Mike Estefan and I thank you for joining me today for this month's

deep dive episode on the EM Clerkship podcast. On this month's episode, we are going to be talking about

everything that is lumbar punctures. We will discuss the indications, the contraindications, and the complications of the procedure.

Then I will share a few of my personal keys to success when performing the procedure,

and finally, we will end by answering the age-old question, that is, when to CT before LP.

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to mention EM clerkship when you do. Now, back to our episode. So let's talk about

lumbar punctures. This is one of my favorite

procedures in emergency medicine. In my opinion, the satisfaction of the CSF dripping out of the

spinal needle into those little clear plastic tubes is rivaled only by a couple other procedures

in our specialty. So to begin, let's start by talking about the indications for lumbar punctures.

Now, to lead this section off, I want to share a quote from one of my attendings in residency

...