Early identification and aggressive treatment of sepsis has the potential to improve outcomes

May 17 2007

More than 215,000 people will die of sepsis in the United States each year, more than 750,000 will require hospital treatment, and the costs will be nearly $17 billion.

Severe sepsis is one of the top 10 leading causes of death in adults, yet there has been little progress in recent decades in treating sepsis and septic shock, and the mortality rate remains disturbingly high.

In a paper to be presented at the 2007 Society for Academic Emergency Medicine (SAEM) Annual Meeting, Alan Jones, MD, of Carolinas Medical Center, Charlotte, NC, will show that Early Goal Directed Therapy (EGDT) is clinically effective in reducing hospital mortality when implemented as a routine protocol in Emergency Departments. For 156 patients, 79 receiving standard care at attending physician discretion and 77 receiving the EGDT protocol, 27% of the standard care patients died in the hospital versus 18% of the EGDT patients, a 33% relative decrease in mortality. EGDT patients did spend 2 more days in intensive care and 1 more day in the hospital that standard care patients.

According to Dr. Jones, "Early identification and aggressive treatment of sepsis has the potential to improve outcomes and contain costs. EGDT can be implemented in a routine Emergency Department setting."

The presentation is entitled "Clinical Effectiveness of Implementing Early Goal Directed Therapy in the Emergency Department Care of Severe Sepsis and Septic Shock: A Prospective Study" by Alan Jones, MD. This paper will be presented at the 2007 SAEM Annual Meeting, May 16-19, 2007, Chicago, IL on Saturday, May 19th, in the Critical Care Session beginning at 1:00 PM in River Exhibition Halls A & B of the Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers. Abstracts of the papers presented are published in Volume 14, Issue 5S, the May 2007 supplement of the official journal of the SAEM, Academic Emergency Medicine.