A Brief Note On Sepsis And Septic Shock

Sepsis is defined by the Surviving Sepsis Campaign (SSC) as “the presence (probable or documented) of infection together with systemic manifestations of infection” (Dellinger et al.,

Septicemia is an infection from a life threatening complication, such as pneumonia, kidney infections, a gunshot wound or have been severely burned. Septicemia is also known as bacteremia or blood poisoning, if it is left untreated it might progress into sepsis. Some symptoms pertaining to Septicemia are reduced urine volume, rapid respiration, fever and confusion to think clearly.

Sepsis and Septic Shock have been my personal topic after the life of young Kamil Williams and a 31-year-old Texas man who both contacted a bacterial infection later turn into sepsis. Although I have not formally studied it during my school or university years, I still find the human body, how it can break down and react to certain ailments interesting. The next question would be why does this happen? Well when there is infection or insult upon the body’s immune system normal reacts and causing an inflammatory response. This normally a good thing and it promotes healing and the resolution of the insult, however in Septic Shock the inflammatory response comes explosive and uncontrollable. According to Allison Hotujec, the author of “Severe Sepsis and Septic Shock Protocols,” Sepsis has been called a “malignant intravascular inflammation.” The term malignant is because it is uncontrolled unregulated and self-perpetuating, in the usual immune response here is release of both pro-inflammatory and anti-inflammatory mediators, these balance to promote tissue

Sepsis was known in the old days as "blood Poisoning" because it is " A poisoning of the system by disease carrying bacteria and their toxins absorbed into the bloodstream, as from festering wounds," according to the World Book Encyclopedia Dictionary. 1 Because Sepsis is a severe and often fatal disease and thought to cause 44,000 deaths a year, it is most important that it be recognized early and treated aggressively with utmost and urgent care. If not treated early it can lead to shock and multiple organ failure and even death. It kills more people than breast, bowel, and prostate cancer combined; however, it can be treated successfully if detected early on. 2. Erin Dean Sepsis does not arise on its own. It stems from another medical condition such as an infection in the lungs, urinary tract, skin, abdomen (such as appendicitis) or other part of the body. Invasive medical procedures like the insertion of a vascular catheter can introduce bacteria into the bloodstream and bring on the condition. Many different types of microbes can cause sepsis, including bacteria, fungi and viruses, but bacteria are the most common culprits. Severe cases often result from a body-wide infection that spreads through the bloodstream, but sepsis can also stem from a localized infection.

Sepsis is the immune response to the body’s defense against the infection. The disease is commonly caused by bacterial infections but can also be caused by other factors and usually begins in the lungs, abdomen, or urinary tract. The virus can be spread anywhere in the body as well as enter anywhere in the body with incidents as minor as scraping your knee or nicking yourself with a bad razor. Since sepsis is so common, the risk of getting the infection is greater when people

More than one million Americans get sepsis each year and twenty-eight to fifty percent of those people die. Sepsis is a medical condition caused by an overwhelming immune response to an infection that is often diagnosed too late. The inflammation caused from this unpredictable disease, leads to blood clots and leaky vessels, which results in weak blood flow, and damages organs. It usually stems from other infections as well as medical conditions in the body and is a major challenge in the ICU. Bacteria is the most common cause but viruses and fungi are causing factors as well. Since sepsis is so hard to diagnose, researchers are trying to find a way to catch this disease early.

A nurse?s responsibility is to assess vital signs repeatedly looking for changes from the baseline levels, review laboratory data related to changes in serum lactate levels, total white blood cell (WBC) count, and the differentials. Increasing serum lactate level, a normal or low total WBC count, and a decreasing segmented neutrophil level with a rising band neutrophil level indicate sepsis. The change is also a left shift in relation to the oxyhemoglobin dissociation curve. If unidentified progression of this syndrome can lead to death. If a nurse identifies the beginnings of sepsis the probability of reversal and uncomplicated recovery is greater.

Severe sepsis and septic shock are major healthcare complications that affect millions of individuals worldwide each year, killing approximately one in four and is growing in incidence. Similar to acute myocardial infarction or stroke, the quickness of appropriate treatment administration, especially in the initial hours after severe sepsis development, is crucial and will most likely influence the patient’s outcome (Dellinger, et al., 2013, p. 583).

1.18. From a nursing perspective identify at least four (4) potential problems of a patient in acute respiratory distress,

Sepsis will be defined as SIRS with positive microbiological cultures whether respiratory, blood, or urine. Participants in the suspected sepsis group are those who meet SIRS criteria but have negative microbiological findings but have positive screening results such as elevated lactate, glycemic instability, thrombocytopenia, or abnormal radiological findings such as consolidation on chest x-ray, patchy infiltrates, etc. Finally, septic shock will be defined as sepsis with hemodynamic instability as evidenced by persistent hypotension despite fluid resuscitation measures and the need for inotropic or vasoactive infusions (Asadi,

Sepsis-3 focuses specifically on the role of organ dysfunction as its pathological feature of host response. Identification of organ dysfunction requires identification of specific diagnostic criteria. The current diagnostic tests (SOFA and qSOFA) establishes or excludes the diagnosis through nonspecific discoveries of acute illness during its early stage. The problem with this is that sepsis varies in severity from patient to patient. Practitioners want a set of clinical criteria that can reliably be used to make clinical decisions (Angus, 2016, p. 14). They want a test guide as well as a therapeutic guide, with the ability to modulate host response (Marshall, 2016, p. 1459). They seek something Sepsis-3 does not offer - a further refinement

Sepsis is a critical condition caused by an overreacting immune response to an infection. Most of the time, such infection are caused by bacteria. When a person is being infected, chemicals are released into the bloodstream to fight off infection. This may result in multiples inflammation found within the body. Inflammation can trigger a cascade of event which may cause multiple organ damage, leading to multiple failure of organs where the body is unable to function normally. In worst scenario, infection can lead to an increase in low blood pressure which rapidly leads to the failure of several organs causing death. Besides causing inflammation, it also causes increased in coagulation, decreased fibrinolysis and decreases the

Sepsis is one of the oldest diseases and has the most ambiguous and tricky syndromes in medicine. Hippocrates believed that sepsis was the case where the flesh gets deteriorated and decayed. Galen, a prominent Greek physician, surgeon and philosopher in the Roman Empire, considered sepsis an admirable event, which is crucial for the healing of wounds. After the germ theory was confirmed by Pasteur and others, sepsis definition shifted to a systemic infection which was defined as “blood poisoning”, and it was believed that sepsis was the result of invasion of a pathologic organism to a host and then its spread in the bloodstream. With the arrival of modern antibiotics, the germ theory was found that it did not fully explained the full pathogenesis of sepsis, and it was also found that many septic patients passed away despite the eradication of the pathogen. So the researchers suggested that the host and not the pathogen is responsible for driving the pathogenesis of sepsis.

Each year, over 750,000 are documented with mortality rate as high as 50% (Angus, Linde-Zwirble, Lidicker, Clermont & Pinsky, 2001). It is the 10th leading cause of death in United States. Globally, it is responsible for significantly higher number of deaths than aids, breast cancer and prostate cancer combined. Results from the National Hospital Discharge Survey in 2008 showed patients admitted with sepsis had a greater length of stay and a mortality rate eight times greater than patients admitted with other diagnoses (Hall, Williams, DeFrances, & Golosinskiy, 2011).

Sepsis is a serious life-threatening condition that arises when the body’s overwhelming immune response to a widespread infection begins to injure its own tissues and organs (Hinkle & Cheever, 2014). At the cellular level, sepsis is characterized by changes in the function of endothelial tissue, in the coagulation process, and blood flow. These changes are initiated by the cellular release of pro-inflammatory substances known as cytokines in response to the presence of infectious microorganisms. The cytokines then interact with the endothelial cells, which results in damage and even possible death of those endothelial cells. As a result, coagulation factors become activated, which in combination with endothelial damage, may hinder blood flow