Dive Brief:
- Sepsis makes a contribution to as many as half of all US hospital deaths, despite being present in only one in ten patients, according to a statement from the American Thoracic Society.
- To study the issue, a team of researchers analyzed 6.5 million hospital discharge records from the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project Nationwide Inpatient Sample in 2010. The researchers found that mortality rates among sepsis patients were 10.4%, compared to 1.1% among non-sepsis patients.
- What's more, they found that of all hospital deaths around the US, up to 52% were among sepsis patients.
Dive Insight:
There has been some progress with sepsis over time; according to FierceHealthcare, severe sepsis mortality rates fell over the past 20 years, even though no new pharmacologic treatments were developed during the period. However, according to the ATA researchers, sepsis treatment has a way to go. That's particularly the case when it comes to patients with less severe sepsis — patients for whom treatment guidelines aren't as well defined — they said.