Blood poisoning: What makes sepsis so dangerous – and why it’s often overlooked

2024-09-07 06:02:30

The disease is life-threatening and a medical emergency. That means: every minute counts. In Germany, 85,000 people die from it every year. However, sepsis is often not recognized by emergency services, a study shows.

Sepsis is one of the most common causes of death in Germany. Every year, 230,000 people are affected by sepsis and at least 85,000 die from it, according to the Patient Safety Alliance. explanation. Sepsis is also often called blood poisoning. It is thought that many cases are not recorded and the actual number of sick people is much higher.

Wolfgang Bauer, an emergency medicine physician at the Benjamin Franklin Campus of the Berlin Charité said: “Sepsis is a dangerous immune reaction of the body to an infection that spreads throughout the body. According to the Federal Agency for Health Education (BZgA), the cause can be any infection, for example pneumonia, urinary tract infection, inflammation in the abdominal cavity or inflammation. The doctor explained: “The body can no longer handle the disease, and the immune system is overpowered.

The result is: “The immune system overheats and starts attacking itself,” the emergency doctor explained. This will not only fight the infection, but also your body. “This can progress into septic shock with multi-organ failure and is often fatal if undiagnosed or untreated,” Bauer said. “This is a very, very emotional situation when you see how the patient cannot be saved despite the most intensive therapy.”

Like a heart attack or stroke, sepsis is a medical emergency that must be treated as quickly as possible. “The earlier you know, the better you can treat it,” says Bauer.

Emergency physicians often do not recognize sepsis

However, sepsis cases are often not recognized by emergency services. Bauer and health scientist Silke Piedmont have this in common Training found out, which was published in February. To do this, they analyzed almost 221,500 emergency services in the health insurance data and 110,420 good services in the so-called emergency services from 2016 in Germany. The aim of the study is to find out how often sepsis is diagnosed in emergency services and which methods are best.

The results are disappointing. “Sepsis is very rare and, in the case of non-medical rescue workers, is not even recorded as a suspicion,” says Bauer. Emergency physicians only documented the suspicion of septic shock in 0.1 percent of cases examined.

The study also showed that the proportion of emergency department patients diagnosed with sepsis in the hospital (1.6 percent) was slightly lower than those diagnosed with heart attacks (2.6 percent) and strokes (2.7 percent), however , there are clear differences in mortality. rate. Accordingly, nearly 32 percent of all sepsis patients die within 30 days of using emergency services;

Emergency workers in all of Germany should really have standard guidelines to measure certain parameters, explains Piedmont, the first author of the publication and a research assistant at the Charité central emergency room on the Benjamin Franklin campus. This will include heart rate, blood pressure, oxygen level in the blood, body temperature, breathing rate and possible change in consciousness. “These parameters can give a very good indication of whether sepsis is present.” However, decisions are often based on gut feeling.

In order to change this, it is first important that we consider sepsis as a possible diagnosis, Bauer said. There is also a general lack of knowledge about heart disease and it is not well known among the population. The symptoms mainly include a sudden change in personality or consciousness, for example confusion, low blood pressure and dizziness or fainting. Low oxygen saturation, shortness of breath and low or high body temperature are also characteristics.

In order to diagnose sepsis, emergency personnel can use a variety of measuring instruments to question vital parameters and obtain measurements from them. According to the study, a multi-measurement evaluation system, called National Warning System 2 (NEWS2), detects almost three-quarters of sepsis cases. In Germany, this type of test is not mentioned in sepsis guidelines and is rarely used.

Even people whose sepsis is not fatal often suffer from long-term and long-term effects, as Piedmont explains. These can include concentration problems and visual or speech problems, but also depression is Some people are reported to need amputations because fingers or whole limbs die. “Sepsis can affect anyone,” says the health expert. This makes it all the more important to create more awareness of the existence and consequences of the syndrome.

According to BZgA information, people can best protect themselves from sepsis by trying to avoid infections. Regular and thorough hand washing, good toilet hygiene and careful wound protection are essential. There are also vaccines against some of the most common causes of sepsis, for example against pneumococci, meningococci or influenza.

dpa/wb