SAN DIEGO – Patients who develop sepsis in the hospital appear to be in greater risk for mortality than those who bring it with them, a new study suggests. Patients with hospital-onset sepsis were twice as likely to die as those infected in the outside world.
MDedge News/Randy Dotinga
Dr. Chanu Rhee
“There could be some differences in quality of care that explains the difference in mortality,” said study lead author Chanu Rhee, MD, assistant professor of population medicine at Harvard Medical School, Boston, in a presentation about the findings at the Critical Care Congress sponsored by the Society of Critical Care Medicine.
In an interview, Dr. Rhee said researchers launched the study to gain a greater understanding of the epidemiology of sepsis in the hospital. They relied on a new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention definition of sepsis that is “enhancing the consistency of surveillance across hospitals and allowing more precise differentiation between hospital-onset versus community-onset sepsis.”
The study authors retrospectively tracked more than 2.2 million patients who were treated at 136 U.S. hospitals from 2009 to 2015. In general, hospital-onset sepsis was defined as patients who had a blood culture, initial antibiotic therapy, and organ dysfunction on their third day in the hospital or later.*
Of the patients, 83,600 had community-onset sepsis and 11,500 had hospital-onset sepsis. Those with sepsis were more likely to be men and have comorbidities such as cancer, congestive heart failure, diabetes, and renal disease.
Patients with hospital-onset sepsis had longer median lengths of stay (19 days) than the community-onset group (8 days) and the no-sepsis group (4 days). The hospital-onset group also had a greater likelihood of ICU admission (61%) than the community-onset (44%) and no-sepsis (9%) groups.
About 34% of those with hospital-onset sepsis died, compared with 17% of the community-onset group and 2% of the patients who didn’t have sepsis. After adjustment, those with hospital-onset sepsis were still more likely to have died (odds ratio, 2.1; 95% confidence interval, 2.0-2.2).
“Other studies have suggested that there may be delays in the recognition and care of patients who develop sepsis in the hospital as opposed to presenting to the hospital with sepsis,” Dr. Rhee said. “It is also possible that hospital-onset sepsis tends to be caused by organisms that are more virulent and resistant to antibiotics.”
Overall, he said, “our findings underscore the importance of targeting hospital-onset sepsis with surveillance, prevention, and quality improvement efforts.”
The study was funded by the CDC and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. The authors reported no relevant disclosures.
SOURCE: Rhee C et al. CCC48, Abstract 29.
*Correction, 3/19/19: An earlier version of this article misstated the definition of sepsis.