Sepsis is the No. 3 leading cause of death in the U.S., killing more than 250,000 people annually. In June, the FDA cleared a new blood test that rapidly identifies the triggering condition of a patient's infection, allowing physicians to give rapid targeted antibiotics, according to STAT.
The traditional method to diagnose sepsis requires a bacteria culture, which takes days to produce results. T2 Biosystems' blood test consists of a detector protein that finds rare bacterial cells in blood samples to detect sepsis within five hours.
The biggest struggle with sepsis care is physicians, nurses and family members aren't able to recognize the condition until organ failure has already set in, so better education and technologies to hasten sepsis diagnosis, are helpful.
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