Sepsis-related mortality in 497 cases with blood culture-positive sepsis in an emergency department

Abstract

Underlying diseases were found to have a considerable role in the death of patients suffering from blood culture-positive sepsis in an ED of a developed country, as only 16% of the deaths by day 90 occurred where death was sepsis-related and the patient had a life-expectancy of more than 6 months. Improving the outcome of sepsis with new treatments is thus challenging. It is possible that day 7+day 28 mortality is a more appropriate endpoint than day 90 mortality when studying the outcome of sepsis, as this time-span includes most of the patients whose death was related to sepsis.