Emergency Rooms with Sepsis Alert Systems See Lower Fatalities from Deadly Infections

New CDC sepsis treatment and diagnosis standards were announced last year, significantly reducing the need for intensive care unit treatments

Patients suffering life-threatening infections face a lower risk of death in emergency rooms that employ systems designed to quickly evaluate them for signs of sepsis, according to the findings of a new study.

Using sepsis alert systems, either standard or electronic, helped to reduce the risk of deaths from serious infections by nearly 20%, according to data published on July 22 in the journal JAMA Network Open by Korean researchers.

Sepsis Infection Risks

Sepsis is a life-threatening condition that occurs when an individual’s immune system has a dangerous response to an infection and starts to damage the body’s tissues and organs. It is the body’s response to any infection, including COVID-19, surgical site infections, influenza or others, and the condition is responsible for one in five deaths worldwide.

Symptoms of sepsis include decreased blood pressure, increased heart rate, fever, confusion, shortness of breath, weakness, and can result in organ failure or death.

Roughly 20% of children who get sepsis will develop other severe medical conditions in the months following the diagnosis. Some of those conditions include chronic respiratory failure, nutritional dependence, chronic kidney disease, worsened epilepsy, and the progression of other existing medical conditions.

Nearly 90% of adult patients with sepsis who were taken to the hospital were admitted with an infection that was not improving. This type of persistent and complex condition can devolve rapidly and requires the coordination of multiple departments to help prevent patient death.

Sepsis Alert Systems

In 2023, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced new Hospital Sepsis Program standards to improve care for patients with sepsis or suspected sepsis. The program included criteria for quickly identifying sepsis.

Many hospitals now use sepsis alert systems to quickly identify if a patient has sepsis. The alert system evaluates if a patient is suspected to have some type of infection, a rapid heartbeat, a temperature over 100 F, rapid breathing, and high blood pressure. Typically, a combination of three or more of the symptoms will alert the staff of a possible sepsis diagnosis.

In some cases, the alert system is fully electronic and in other cases, the system relies on hospital staff to identify red flags that may point to sepsis.

Nearly 20% Reduction in Sepsis Deaths

Researchers from Seoul National University Bundang Hospital in Korea, led by Dr. Hyung-Jun Kim, analyzed 22 studies, including more than 19,500 patients involved in emergency room sepsis studies. Overall, 53% of ERs studied used sepsis alert systems. The remaining ERs did not and served as the control group.

The data indicated using sepsis alert systems led to a 19% lower risk of death and shorter hospital stays. Sepsis alert systems also improved how quickly hospital staff administered fluids, took blood cultures, administered antibiotics, and examined other key health measures.

The researchers also discovered that hospitals using sepsis alert systems had a lower rate of transferring patients to the intensive care unit within 48 hours of emergency room treatment.

Kim’s team determined detecting sepsis early is key to patient survival, that emergency rooms play a crucial role in sepsis management and are the front line to detecting sepsis infections early. However, they noted ERs face challenges in recognizing the warning signs early due to the high number of patients needing treatment across the U.S.

Using sepsis alert systems is linked to better outcomes for patients and better management of sepsis overall in ERs, the researchers concluded. They noted that access to sepsis alert systems in every ER is key to helping more patients avoid life-threating infections and better patient outcomes overall.