Conference Coverage
Less severe hospital sepsis is not being recognized in time
Key clinical point: Have a high index of suspicion for less severe sepsis at hospital admission.Major finding: About 56% of sepsis-related deaths...
SAN DIEGO – About half of sepsis-related deaths are in people with normal blood pressure and normal or intermediate serum lactate levels (less than 4 mmol/L) on admission, suggesting that perhaps in some cases, sepsis that could have been extinguished early got out of hand before it was recognized, according to a review of about 7 million adult hospital admissions by Kaiser Permanente researchers.
In other words, even though death rates have come down for patients with severe sepsis, there’s still a ways to go to recognize and treat less severe cases in time. Lead investigator Dr. Vincent Liu of the Kaiser Permanente division of research, Oakland, Calif., explained the problem – and what Kaiser’s doing about it – at an international conference of the American Thoracic Society.