Sepsis is the most common cause of death in the ICU. Patient mortality is greatly reduced when clinicians are able to treat a patient with sepsis within six hours.
The sepsis resuscitation bundle is a protocol to be implemented as soon as a sepsis diagnosis is made. It includes a variety of treatment measures and is most effective in reducing mortality and cost if begun no later than six hours of onset.
However, in a study published in the International Journal of Collaborative Enterprise, researchers found that only half of sepsis patients receive all of the care elements necessary in that window.
Here are four things to know about this research.
• Researchers used data from 600 sepsis cases to build a computer model enabling them to statistically analyze which factors were impeding treatment.
• The analysis showed that bottlenecks generally occur with X-ray, lab work and catheter placement. These contribute to overall delays in treatment that increase the likelihood of losing valuable time within the critical six-hour window.
• They projected that making changes in six areas of the treatment process may reduce total average patient treatment time by 31.8 percent.
• These changes could also improve the sepsis resuscitation bundle compliance rate by more than 20 percent.
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