CDC announces new effort to combat sepsis in U.S. hospitals
CDC Director Dr. Mandy Cohen said sepsis is taking too many lives, and her agency has mounted an effort to combat the disease. Photo courtesy of the Centers for Disease control and Prevention
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday it’s launching a new effort aimed at fighting sepsis in U.S. hospitals to “quickly identify sepsis and save more lives.”
The Hospital Sepsis Program Core Elements will seek to support hospitals by ensuring effective teams and resources are in place to deal with sepsis.
“Sepsis is taking too many lives. One in three people who dies in a hospital has sepsis during that hospitalization. Rapid diagnosis and immediate appropriate treatment, including antibiotics, are essential to saving lives, yet the challenges of awareness about and recognition of sepsis are enormous,” CDC Director Dr. Mandy Cohen said in a statement.
The CDC is urging all hospitals to have sepsis programs and improve sepsis patient care by adopting the seven key concepts in the core elements.
They include dedicating the necessary resources to sepsis, implementing processes that improve identification and management of sepsis, tracking sepsis outcomes and providing ongoing sepsis education for healthcare professionals.
“The seven elements complement clinical guidelines by describing the leadership, expertise, tracking, education, and other elements that can be implemented in a wide variety of hospitals to improve the quality of sepsis care,” CDC’ medical adviser Dr. Raymund Dantes said in a statement.
Sepsis is the body’s extreme life-threatening response to infection that requires urgent medical care to save lives and avoid organ and tissue damage. Each year, at least 1.7 million American adults develop sepsis, the CDC said.
At least 350,000 adults who get sepsis die during hospitalization or are moved into hospice care.
Virtually any infection, including COVID-19, the flu or RSV can lead to developing sepsis.
Having sepsis may put patients at higher risk for future heart attacks and re-hospitalization according to a study published in February by the American Heart Association.
Researchers found that people hospitalized for sepsis or who developed it while hospitalized had a 38% higher risk of re-hospitalization for all causes over the next 12 years and a 43% higher risk of rehospitalization for cardiovascular causes.