Waiting longer than five hours to give antibiotics to a pediatric patient with sepsis increases the risk of death, according to a study published June 5 in JAMA Network Open.
For the study, researchers looked at the outcomes of 19,515 pediatric patients with sepsis at 51 children's hospitals across the U.S. They observed patient outcomes when they were given antibiotic therapies within one hour of arriving at the emergency department and compared that to how outcomes changed if antibiotics were administered beyond 330 minutes, or 5.5 hours.
The median time pediatric patients were given antibiotics was within 69 minutes of arriving at emergency departments, researchers found.
"Overall, sepsis was recognized quickly, and IV antibiotics and fluids were administered promptly," the researchers wrote. "We identified an inflection point in time to antibiotic administration at 330 minutes, beyond which there was an increase in adjusted odds of both 3-day and 30-day sepsis-attributable mortality."