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Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Human Factor. Sepsis



 I recently received this email from a follower regarding sepsis,

I read your blog regarding the necessity of urging hospitals to develop a protocol as a preventable measure in the early detection of sepsis in a patient. 

You blog rings very true to my family and as we buried our mother last month.  A victim of sepsis.  She was scheduled to be released from the hospital within the next two days, when the hospital realized at that point that her overall condition had started to rapidly deteriorate.

We are at a loss as to the hospital's late discovery about the severe infection our Mom had detected and the hospital's seemingly either misguided or complete misunderstanding of the early signals for sepsis”.


I think this is occurring more than we anticipate. One way to prevent this from happening is to have a good screening system in place. Patients should be screened for SIRS (Severe Inflammatory response syndrome) not only in the ER but also on the floor with the change of shift. As we know, SIRS is the initial phase of sepsis followed by Sepsis, Severe sepsis, Septic shock and finally multi-organ failure.

SIRS consists of

1.      Heart Rate more than 90/min.
2.      Respiratory rate more than 20/min.
3.      White blood cell count more than 12000 or less than 4000.
4.      Temperature less than 36 degrees or greater than 38 degrees.

A number of hospitals are implementing this screening protocol. I hope we should be able to do that too. I will keep you posted as we move along.

Blog you later.

About the picture:  Big Island while I was lava hopping. Temperature around 1,200 °C. 

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