What You Need to Know About Sepsis

Many people believe that sepsis is a blood infection or blood poisoning. However, it really is neither. Sepsis occurs as a result of your body’s response to an infection. The infection usually is a bacterial infection, but it also may be a viral, fungal or parasitic infection.

In fighting the infection, the immune system may go into overdrive and produce a greater response to the infection than is required to fight it. This over-response then results in widespread inflammation, which in turn causes the formation of blood clots. If the body cannot regulate its immune response, these blood clots eventually block blood flow to the body’s organs, damaging them. If sepsis is not diagnosed and treated quickly, the organs can be permanently damaged. Widespread organ failure and death may follow.

Sepsis is a very serious condition. It has a high death rate, with approximately one-third of all people who develop the condition dying from it. In the United States, an estimated 215,000 people die each year from sepsis and an additional 750,000 are treated for it.

Diagnosing Sepsis

In general, diagnosing a patient with sepsis is not difficult. Doctors take a sample of bodily fluid, such as blood, urine, spinal or joint fluid, and run tests to see if an infection is present. Some of the common symptoms in patients experiencing sepsis include fever, chills, rapid heart rate, nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain.

Medically, when diagnosing sepsis, physicians will look to see if patients have symptoms consistent with one of the three different levels of sepsis: sepsis, severe sepsis and septic shock. The seriousness of the condition increases with each level. The symptoms also vary, depending on which level the patient has.

Patients with sepsis usually have at least two of the following symptoms:

Fever (temperature 101.3 F or greater)
Body temperature below 95 F
Heart rate above 90 beats per minute
Respiratory rate higher than 20 breaths per minute
Suspected or confirmed infection

Patients with severe sepsis have begun experiencing organ dysfunction and will have at least one of the following additional symptoms:

Abnormal heart function
Decrease in platelet count
Mottled skin
Significant decrease in urine output
Sudden change in mental status
Trouble breathing

Lastly, patients with the most serious stage of sepsis, septic shock, will have extremely low blood pressure in addition to symptoms of severe sepsis.

Sepsis must be treated promptly to minimize the possibility of permanent injury or death. In general, sepsis is treated with IV fluids and antibiotics. Depending on the patient’s condition, he or she may need to be treated in the ICU and also may require ventilation and dialysis if the lungs and kidneys have been affected.

Risk Factors Associated with Sepsis

Any person can develop sepsis – even healthy people – but certain risk factors make some people more susceptible than others. These factors include:

Age – the elderly, children and babies are at greater risk
Race – statistics show that African-American men have the highest risk
Health – those with compromised immune systems are at greater risk, including those with HIV/AIDS, cancer, renal disease and liver disease, organ transplants, pneumonia, diabetes
Medical implants – those with medical implants, such as hip and knee implants
Invasive devices – those with invasive devices, such as catheters and breathing tubes

Those who are or who have been hospitalized for treatment of an illness, disease or for surgery are at greater risk of sepsis, particularly ICU patients, as bacterial infections can be carried through unsterilized or improperly handled central lines.

When to Contact an Attorney

According to the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), sepsis occurs in 1-2 percent of all hospitalizations in the U.S. In some of these cases, a patient may develop sepsis as a result of a preventable medical error. For example, a surgeon may have not performed a procedure in a completely sterile environment or a nurse may have failed to keep the area around a catheter or surgery site clean and free of bacteria. In other cases, a treating physician may fail to recognize the warning signs of sepsis and delay diagnosis of infection, resulting in great harm to the patient.

For more information on your legal rights following a hospital-born infection or other preventable medical error, contact an experienced medical malpractice attorney. A lawyer knowledgeable in these types of cases can review your claim and help you determine the best way to proceed.