New research published in Clinical Infectious Diseases found patients hospitalized with sepsis that have undergone a solid organ transplant are more likely to survive than sepsis patients who have not had a solid organ transplant.
The retrospective study involved data from an alliance of leading academic medical centers for patients hospitalized with sepsis or severe sepsis between 2012 and 2014. The research focused on outcomes for patients who received a kidney, liver, heart, lung, pancreas or intestines transplant.
The data revealed in-hospital mortality for sepsis was lower among those who had undergone a solid-organ transplant (8.7 percent) compared to those who had not (12.7 percent). Similarly, in-hospital mortality for severe sepsis was lower among those who had undergone a solid-organ transplant (5.5 percent) compared to those who had not (9.4 percent).
Even after a multivariate adjustment, patients who had undergone a kidney, liver or co-transplant (kidney-pancreas or kidney-liver) procedure had lower sepsis mortality than non-transplant patients.
Two reasons for the gap in the mortality rates could be because transplant patients tend to receive immunosuppressive drugs and maintenance therapies or because kidney, liver and co-transplant recipients may experience lower-risk infections or organ dysfunctions than the general sepsis population.
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