Half of patients with sepsis die within two years, according to hospital research

TUESDAY, Oct. 15, 2024 (HealthDay News) — Half of people who develop blood poisoning, also known as sepsis, are dead within a few years, a new study shows.

Just over 50% of patients admitted to the emergency room with sepsis died within two years, Danish researchers report.

“We found that certain factors increased the risk of death after sepsis, including, not surprisingly, advanced age,” said Finn Nielsen, senior scientist in clinical epidemiology at Aarhus University Hospital in Denmark.

“Additionally, conditions such as dementia, heart disease, cancer and previous hospitalizations with sepsis in the last six months before admission also increased the risk of death during a median follow-up period of two years,” Nielsen added in a hospital news release.

For the study, researchers tracked the outcomes of patients admitted to Aarhus University Hospital with sepsis between October 2017 and March 2018.

“Our study was based on a sepsis database, which provided valuable information based on prospectively collected patient data,” Nielsen said. “Unlike commonly used routine registry data, this approach minimized errors and provided more accurate and detailed insights into the effects of sepsis.”

The researchers identified 714 patients who developed sepsis during that time.

After an average of two years, 361 had died – not just from sepsis, but from any cause.

Old age increased the risk of sepsis by 4% for each additional year a person grew older, researchers found.

Furthermore, the results showed that a history of cancer more than doubled a person’s risk of death, clogged arteries increased the risk by 39%, and dementia increased the risk by 90%.

People with repeated bouts of sepsis were also 48% more likely to die, based on data from hospitalized patients previously admitted with sepsis in the past six months.

“We believe this knowledge will be useful to both physicians and researchers in the field of acute medicine,” said Nielsen. “It is critical that we recognize that sepsis is a serious disease with high mortality.”

However, larger studies are needed as this study was conducted in a single hospital, Nielsen noted.

“Similar but larger studies of sepsis-related outcomes need to be replicated across departments, regions and countries to gain a comprehensive epidemiological picture of sepsis,” Nielsen said.

Neilsen presented these findings at the annual meeting of the European Society for Emergency Medicine in Copenhagen, Denmark.

“Sepsis is a serious and potentially fatal medical condition. The incidence of sepsis is increasing in several countries, but until now there is limited, reliable information on the long-term outcomes for patients who develop sepsis,” said Dr. Barbra Backus, president of the association’s abstract selection, during a meeting in News. edition.

“This study has identified certain risk factors that should alert physicians to the risk that patients with sepsis are at increased risk of death, so that they can monitor and monitor them more closely,” added Backus, an emergency physician in Rotterdam. Netherlands, who was not involved in the research.

Findings presented at a medical meeting should be considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed article.

More information

The USCenters for Disease Control and Prevention has more on sepsis.

SOURCE: European Society for Emergency Medicine, press release, October 14, 2024