Septic shock is the last and most severe stage of sepsis. Sepsis occurs when your immune system has an extreme reaction to an infection. The inflammation throughout your body can cause dangerously low blood pressure. You need immediate treatment if you have septic shock.
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.
The three stages of sepsis are: sepsis, severe sepsis, and septic shock. When your immune system goes into overdrive in response to an infection, sepsis may develop as a result.
Sepsis happens when an infection you already have triggers a chain reaction throughout your body. Infections that lead to sepsis most often start in the lung, urinary tract, skin, or gastrointestinal tract. Without timely treatment, sepsis can rapidly lead to tissue damage, organ failure, and death.
The mortality rate of SIRS ranges from 6% to 7% and in septic shock amounts to over 50%. In particular, abdominal sepsis exhibits the highest mortality rate with 72%. The long-term prognosis is equally poor; only approximately 30% survived the first year after hospital admission.
In severe cases, one or more organ systems fail. In the worst cases, blood pressure drops, the heart weakens, and the patient spirals toward septic shock. Once this happens, multiple organs—lungs, kidneys, liver—may quickly fail, and the patient can die.
Septic shock is the most severe level and is diagnosed when your blood pressure drops to dangerous levels.
As severe sepsis usually involves infection of the bloodstream, the heart is one of the first affected organs.
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.
Severe sepsis develops when the infection causes organ damage. Septic shock is the most severe form in which the infection causes low blood pressure, resulting in damage to multiple organs. About three in every 10 patients with severe sepsis, and half of those with septic shock, die in the hospital.
On average, the recovery period from this condition takes about three to ten days, depending on the appropriate treatment response, including medication.
"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.
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.
Left untreated, toxins produced by bacteria can damage the small blood vessels, causing them to leak fluid into the surrounding tissues. This can affect your heart's ability to pump blood to your organs, which lowers your blood pressure and means blood doesn't reach vital organs, such as the brain and liver.
Sepsis often is characterized by an acute brain dysfunction, which is associated with increased morbidity and mortality. Its pathophysiology is highly complex, resulting from both inflammatory and noninflammatory processes, which may induce significant alterations in vulnerable areas of the brain.
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.
Long term effects of sepsis
Symptoms of post-sepsis syndrome include: feeling lethargic or excessively tired.
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.
Organ failure, including kidney failure, is a hallmark of sepsis. As the body is overwhelmed, its organs begin to shut down, causing even more problems. The kidneys are often among the first to be affected.
This sepsis-induced global hypoperfusion state has common clinical manifestations such as hypotension, decreased capillary refill time, mottled skin, and cold extremities.
Cardiac dysfunction is a consequence of severe sepsis [3–5] and is characterized by impaired contractility [6], diastolic dysfunction, as well as reduced cardiac index and ejection fraction (EF) [7]. Cardiac dysfunction is an important component of multiorgan failure that is caused by severe sepsis [8, 9].
Signs and symptoms of sepsis
difficulty breathing. fast heart rate or low blood pressure (hypotension) extreme pain.
Sepsis is caused by an infection. Sepsis is triggered by the body's immune system response when the infection reaches the bloodstream. Chemicals are released into the bloodstream resulting in inflammation. This can lead to tissue damage, organ failure and even death.