Hospital mortality of patients with septic shock is more than 40% (2). Sepsis is widely recognized as a highly life-threatening condition associated with a high rate of patient deaths during intensive care unit (ICU) stay in the whole world (3).
An estimated 27% of people with sepsis in hospitals and 42% of people in intensive care units will die. Antimicrobial resistance is a major challenge in sepsis treatment as it complicates the ability to treat infections, especially in health-care associated infections.
When treatment or medical intervention is missing, sepsis is a leading cause of death, more significant than breast cancer, lung cancer, or heart attack. Research shows that the condition can kill an affected person in as little as 12 hours.
Sepsis is treatable if it's identified and treated quickly. In most cases it leads to full recovery with no lasting problems.
Many people who survive sepsis recover completely and their lives return to normal. However, as with some other illnesses requiring intensive medical care, some patients have long-term effects.
The average sepsis-related length of stay during the baseline data collection period was 3.35 days, and the baseline sepsis-related 30-day readmission rate was 188/407 (46.19%).
Patients with sepsis accounted for 45% of ICU bed days and 33% of hospital bed days. The ICU length of stay (LOS) was between 4 and 8 days and the median hospital LOS was 18 days.
Many patients who survive severe sepsis recover completely, and their lives return to normal. But some people can have permanent organ damage. For example, in someone who already has impaired kidneys, sepsis can lead to kidney failure that requires lifelong dialysis.
If sepsis is not treated early, it can turn into septic shock and cause your organs to fail. This is life threatening.
The condition can arise suddenly and progress quickly, and it's often hard to recognize. Sepsis was once commonly known as “blood poisoning.” It was almost always deadly. Today, even with early treatment, sepsis kills about 1 in 5 affected people.
Septic shock: Septic shock is the last stage of sepsis and is defined by extremely low blood pressure, despite lots of IV (intravenous) fluids.
Bacterial infections are the most common cause, but other types of infections can also cause it. The infections are often in the lungs, stomach, kidneys, or bladder. It's possible for sepsis to begin with a small cut that gets infected or with an infection that develops after surgery.
Severe breathlessness or sleepiness. It feels like you're going to die or pass out. Skin mottled or discoloured. An extremely high or a very low temperature; repeated vomiting; seizures; and a rash which doesn't fade when you press a glass against it are also possible 'red flags'.
Most people recover from mild sepsis, but the mortality rate for septic shock is about 40%. Also, an episode of severe sepsis places you at higher risk of future infections.
Septic shock is the most severe level and is diagnosed when your blood pressure drops to dangerous levels.
Referred to in the report as "the final common pathway to death" for severe infectious diseases, it's a leading cause of death in hospitals, with an estimated mortality of 26.7% in hospital patients and 42.6% in intensive care unit patients treated for sepsis.
“Sepsis is challenging because often the inciting event is a common infection. Patients often don't think of common infections as potentially deadly ones.”
Healthcare professionals should treat sepsis with antibiotics as soon as possible. Antibiotics are critical tools for treating life-threatening infections, like those that can lead to sepsis.
The diagnosis of sepsis in critically ill patients is challenging, because it can be complicated by the presence of inflammation as a result of other underlying disease processes and prior use of antibiotics making cultures negative.
Regardless of the cause, the pain can be severe and many survivors say it was the worst pain they had ever felt. Severe abdominal pain may also cause nausea and vomiting, which can in turn increase the pain and cause dehydration if you're not able to replace lost fluids.
"When an infection reaches a certain point, this can happen in a matter of hours." Sepsis usually starts out as an infection in just one part of the body, such as a skin wound or a urinary tract infection, Tracey says.
Sepsis can lead to tissue damage, organ failure and even death if it isn't treated quickly. In Maranhas' case, it led to a medically induced coma and 46 days in the hospital in intensive care.
While most patients with sepsis recover fully, those patients who go on to develop severe complications such as septic shock may need additional support and possibly rehabilitation on their road to recovery. Managing sepsis at home, after discharge from the hospital includes addressing several factors.
Sepsis is the most frequent cause of admission to an intensive care unit (ICU), the most common cause of death in ICU [4], and a very common cause of hospital readmission in sepsis survivors [5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12], and has been recently reported as the final common pathway to death from infection [13].
Sepsis causes cerebral dysfunction in the short and long term and induces disruption of the blood–brain barrier (BBB), neuroinflammation, hypoperfusion, and accumulation of amyloid β (Aβ) and tau protein in the brain.