New research once again confirms the great danger of sepsis and highlights factors that can help prevent patient risks.
- Half of all sepsis patients admitted to an emergency medical department died within two years, according to a new study.
- Advanced age as well as dementia, heart disease, cancer and previous hospitalization with sepsis in the last six months before the new admission increase the patient’s risk of death.
- Doctors should pay attention to this when treating a patient with sepsis.
Sepsis is characterized by an extreme response of the immune system to an infection leading to organ dysfunction. This very serious disorder is responsible for one in 5 deaths worldwide.
A team from Aarhus University Hospital (Denmark) sought to better understand this disease, formerly called sepsis. She discovered several risk factors associated with sepsis-related deaths.
Sepsis: half of affected patients die within two years
The researchers studied the medical records of 2,110 patients who came to the emergency room with serious infections between October 2017 and the end of March 2018. The diagnosis of sepsis was confirmed for 714 of them. They linked this information with death data from the Danish registry systems. They then found that half of the sepsis patients died within two years from any cause, including the infection itself.
Scientists also noticed that older age increased the risk of death by 4% for each additional year. They highlighted other factors that can predict the prognosis of patients developing the infection. Patients who had a history of cancer had a more than doubled risk (121%). Having ischemic heart disease (a condition in which the arteries supplying blood to the heart become narrowed or blocked by a build-up of fat) increased it by 39% and dementia by 90%. Additionally, a previous admission with sepsis in the past six months resulted in a 48% increased risk.
Sepsis: be attentive to risk factors for fatal outcome
Head of research, Dr. Finn E. Nielsen presented the discovery at the European Congress of Emergency Medicine this Tuesday, October 15, 2024. He also took the opportunity to invite health professionals to pay attention to the risk factors identified thanks to their work when caring for a patient suffering from sepsis. That is, age, history of cancer or sepsis, presence of ischemic heart disease or diagnosis of dementia.
“Our study identifies several risk factors that should be prioritized by medical staff for information, care and follow-up checks. We believe this knowledge is useful for both clinicians and researchers in the field of acute medicine”recalls the expert in the press release. “Recognizing that sepsis is a serious illness with high mortality is crucial.”
However, he recognizes: “Although we identified several risk factors that clearly increased the risk of death and should provide attention to clinicians and researchers during the discharge planning process, as well as for the development of future prediction studies, we do not We have not been able to construct a comprehensive model suitable for mortality prediction in clinical practice. It is necessary to do prospective studies on the effect of other factors that are not examined in our study, including various. complications that may arise after hospitalization and after discharge.”
