A new study from the University of Michigan found that “ten percent of patients hospitalized with sepsis were previously healthy—and many of those who ultimately died did so because it was too late to intervene.”
The study focused on healthy patients “as a way to tease out the effects of advanced age, comorbidities, and other common risk factors on sepsis outcomes.” These previously healthy patients “tended to have less organ failure upon arrival at the hospital and more COVID-19 related sepsis.” Treatment also tended to differ with these patients, “with less adherence to sepsis management practices, such as blood culture collection and timely delivery of antibiotics.”
The patients in this cohort who died “tended to be older, and had more acute respiratory dysfunction, altered mental status, and shock upon admission to the hospital.” These patients also “received vasopressors and invasive mechanical ventilation more often than survivors.” Most of their deaths were “deemed to be unpreventable due to how sick they were when they arrived at the hospital.”
One of the authors of the study noted that “some of these tragic deaths among previously healthy people might have been avoided if their illness had been prevented through vaccination or recognized and treated early before they got sick enough to come to the hospital.”
