NHS Lothian

Royal College of Anaesthetists

DL_2023_015

Sepsis is a term used for severe infection which affects multiple body systems. Suspected sepsis is a common presentation to the Emergency Department and must be treated immediately as it can be life threatening. One of the challenges in improving care for people who present with suspected sepsis is around figuring out who has the condition, and who has an infection which is less severe, and who has a different condition entirely. Currently, we do not have a good way of identifying people who present with sepsis using routinely collected data. This project hopes to compare different ways of using data that is collected during the time people are in hospital. If we can accurately find out patients who present with sepsis to the Emergency Department, we will be able to better understand the disease, and also be able to plan future research projects where we can compare tests or treatments which can improve how we care for those with sepsis.

Severe sepsis is a rare, life-threatening condition that must be treated quickly, and is responsible for 52,000 deaths annually. However, it has a wide range of presenting symptoms making it both common to suspect but hard to identify. When caring for suspected sepsis in the ED, neither diagnosis nor treatment can wait for the clinical course to reveal itself or even for all investigations to be returned – clinicians must act immediately, even if confirmation of sepsis or not occurs later. This project looks to define sepsis through routine data and understand the specifics of the population identified. With an accurate and well understood sepsis identification method, we would be able to understand patients presenting with suspected sepsis in the Emergency Department and identify risk factors in the population before requiring confirmation through lab test results. We would be able to plan clinical trials into sepsis with greater accuracy and might be able to develop a biobank resource which looks at surplus blood samples from patients with suspected sepsis – this could help us understand the course of the disease and generate diagnostic or prognostic tools. This project is an early step in how we improve care for those with sepsis. It will not result in any direct benefits to patients yet. However, it will form part of a robust research programme on the condition – and it will inform future research design: making such work realistic, effective and deliverable within the NHS.

Public Health Research

02/11/2023

De-Personalised

TRE