During the first two and half years of the pandemic, the COVID-19 virus accounted for 1 in 6 sepsis cases across Mass General Brigham hospitals, according to new research.
Researchers from Boston-based Brigham and Women's Hospital led the study, which is based on EHR records from five Mass General Brigham hospitals. They used clinical criteria from the CDC's sepsis surveillance definition to quantify the prevalence and mortality of SARS-CoV-2-associated sepsis.
Based on EHR data from March 2020 to November 2022, researchers identified more than 431,000 hospitalizations from 261,595 patients. Just over 5 percent of hospitalizations during that time were due to COVID-19, and 28 percent of these hospitalizations involved SARS-CoV-2-related sepsis. The death rate for COVID-19-related sepsis was 33 percent in the first few months of the pandemic, falling to a rate of about 14.5 percent that remained stable.
"Most people, including medical professionals, equate sepsis with bacterial infections," Claire Shappell, MD, lead study author, said in a news release shared with Becker's. "This is reflected in treatment guidelines and quality measures that require immediate antibiotics for patients with suspected sepsis. However, viral infections, including the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19, can trigger the same dysregulated immune response that reads to organ dysfunction as in bacterial sepsis."
Researchers said the study's design provides a framework for future studies on viral-associated sepsis for other infections, such as the flu and respiratory syncytial virus.