Sepsis arises when the body’s response to an infection injures its own tissues and organs. It may lead to shock, multi-organ failure, and death - especially if not recognized early and treated promptly. Sepsis is the final common pathway to death from most infectious diseases worldwide.
The website of the European Sepsis Alliance is now live - europeansepsisalliance.org.
The ESA was founded in March 2018 at the event “Sepsis - A Call to EU Action” under the auspices of the EU Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, Vytenis Andriukaitis in Brussels, and is one of our regional sepsis alliances.
The ESA is working on implementing the demands of the WHO Resolution on Sepsis within Europe, as summarized in the Brussels Resolution.
The Houston Methodist Hospital in Houston, Texas will host multiple events for World Sepsis Day on September 12th and 13th of 2019.
The Sepsis Education symposium will be held on September 12th. This activity has been planned and implemented in accordance with the essential areas and policies of the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education, Texas Nurses Association, and American Nurses Credentialing Center’s Commission on Accreditation, and American Association for Respiratory Care. Physicians, advanced acute care nurse practitioners, physician assistants, nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists, occupational therapists, pharmacists, administrators, and quality officers will be able to earn continuing education credits.
There will be a general public booth display with giveaways and a poster contest on September 13th from 8 am to 3 pm at the Houston Methodist Hospital Crain Garden.
More than 1.5 million people get sepsis in the United States each year, with sepsis affecting 27 to 30 million people worldwide. At least 250,000 Americans die from sepsis each year and about 1 in 3 patients who die in a hospital have sepsis. The mission of this event is to promote awareness of sepsis to the community and healthcare team with the goal of improving patient care.
We will hold our next WSD Supporter Meeting on September 30th, 2019 at ESICM LIVES 2019 in Berlin. Main topics will be the collaboration with the WHO to roll out the demands of the Resolution on Sepsis, an update on the establishment of regional sepsis alliances, World Sepsis Day, and more. You can download the preliminary agenda below.
If you are in Berlin in September, we encourage you to participate – we are looking forward to connecting with you and hearing your ideas and suggestions to continue to raise awareness for sepsis worldwide.
Monday, September 30th, 2019
12:15 to 14:00h (lunch break of ESICM LIVES 2019)
Meeting Room: M2, Level 3 of the City Cube
Snacks will be provided
Participation is free of charge and open to everyone
Our World Sepsis Day Infographics are now available in Portuguese and Italian, besides English, Spanish, French, and German. They are a quick and free download in our WSD Toolkit Section.
Like in the other languages, there are a total of 21 infographics, nine on sepsis itself, ranging from symptoms, sources, prevention, risk groups, to physiology, post-sepsis symptoms, and more. Additionally, there are two on hand-washing, and ten more pointing out the relationship to other World Health Days, such as World Malaria Day, World AIDS Day, World Immunization Week, and more.
The infographics are available as images (.png), as well as optimized for print (.pdf).
If you like the new infographics, please use them as you see fit, on your social media channels, printed at your events, and everywhere in between. Tell your colleagues and friends about sepsis and World Sepsis Day. If you found a typo or have suggestions for improvements or more graphics, please get in touch.
Following the death of 12-year-old Rory Staunton in April 2012 from sepsis arising as a consequence of a minor sporting injury, his parents and others campaigning as the Rory Staunton Foundation successfully influenced the New York State Department of Health (DOH) to mandate the use of guidelines around sepsis.
‘Rory’s Regulations’ mandate acute care hospitals to implement protocols for the recognition and management of patients with sepsis, as well as to report performance metrics to the DOH. The regulations include protocols regarding the administration of antimicrobials within three hours, and intravenous fluid resuscitation within 6 hours.
Importantly, and in contrast with performance incentives introduced in some other countries such as in the U.K, there were no targets – improvement was expected through benchmarking. So, how did New York State fair?
A study published last week (Association Between State-Mandated Protocolized Sepsis Care and In-Hospital Mortality Among Adults with Sepsis) examines mortality within 30 days of admission with sepsis. This was a huge study, with over 1,000,000 patient episodes across more than 500 hospitals, with almost one third in New York State (NYS). It’s a retrospective cohort study with geographic controls - in other words, it compares data on patients in NYS admitted before the Regulations were issued (in 2013) and those after the regulations, with data from the same time periods in four other US States without such regulations. It also examines length of stay in hospital, in addition to unintended consequence such as intensive care unit (ICU) admission, central venous catheter (CVC) use, and the development of C. difficile colitis. It’s limited in part by the design, and in part by the fact that it uses ICD-9 coded data rather than ICD-10, but robustly attempts to mitigate against its limitations by controlling for temporal trends.
From a concerning starting point, in which NYS residents suffered higher mortality rates than those in control states (26.3% vs. 22.0%), continuous improvement in primary outcomes occurred in NYS at a greater pace than in the other states (in which, encouragingly, outcomes also improved). After the introduction of Rory’s Regulations, mortality in NYS fell to 22.0% whilst that in other states fell to 19.1%. These trends seemed to have been accelerating, with data from the last quarter year suggesting that mortality in NYS was actually over 3% lower than in the other states.
It’s interesting to note that the use of ICU beds and CVCs was lower in NYS before (and during) the study than in other states, which the authors attribute to a lack of bed availability. After the study, there were still fewer ICU beds or CVCs used in NYS. This strongly suggests that a focus on early recognition and immediate management may limit the maximum acuity of illness, which in turn may allow more resource-constrained settings to achieve outcomes which can as good or better than more resourced neighbors, just by focussing on the basics.
Unfortunately, this study was not designed to determine whether the governmental mandates actually increased iv fluid or antibiotic use. These specific protocol components were not included in the secondary outcomes, leaving any such relationship to supposition or assumption.
So, overall, it seems Rory’s Regulations work. This work illustrates how, as has been demonstrated in other countries, the critical interrelationship between the public, advocacy organizations, the media, health professionals, and policy makers can be harnessed to save lives. Whether this be through financial incentive encouraging local innovation, through systems change and benchmarked reporting as here, through the adoption of technological solutions or through a combination of strategies, it is vital - literally - that governments come together to act decisively on sepsis, and in doing so to deliver on the WHO Resolution on Sepsis issued in 2017.
Our Sepsis Awareness Posters are now available in 5 languages - Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German, in addition to English.
They cover:
Symptoms of Sepsis
Risk Groups of Sepsis
Sources of Sepsis
Prevention of Sepsis
Global Burden of Sepsis
All posters are optimized for print, A3 (297 × 420 millimeters, 11.69 × 16.54 inches), and PDF. They are a quick and free download in our WSD Toolkit Section. We encourage you to download, print, and hang them up in your organization to raise awareness of sepsis.
As always, we welcome your feedback - if you find a spelling mistake, clumsy phrasing, or have ideas for additional posters or materials, please let us know.
World Sepsis Day is less than 2 months away. To help make your planned event even better, we have teamed up with AMOMED to send you free marketing material, such as balloons, stickers, pens, bags, professionally printed pocket cards, flyers, and more (see picture above).
This is the first time we are able to do this - we consider it an experiment. To keep this experiment fair for everybody, please read and understand the following rules:
The order form will automatically close after the first 50 orders
Depending on how much material has been ordered in these 50 first orders, we might be able to open up the form again. Make sure to follow us on Twitter, where we will announce it first
The material per order is also limited - if you need more material, please either download it from our toolkit section and print it yourself, or contact us and we will happily work with you to find somebody locally who can produce the items you need in a bigger quantity
Please understand that orders are limited to one person per institution - a second order for the same institution will be disregarded
Please order only material you plan to use - that will help the environment and keep it fair for everyone
Please double-check your shipping address and email address
Please note that we will ship the material in early August
Please note you need to have JavaScript enabled to see the order form
Again, a huge thanks to AMOMED for sponsoring this experiment and for supporting World Sepsis Day.
