World Sepsis Day - September 13, 2022
World Sepsis Day is a global initiative in September every year. It was established in 2012 by the Global Sepsis Alliance, a not-for-profit charity that aims to provide global leadership to reduce the worldwide burden of sepsis. World Sepsis Day aims to raise awareness of sepsis and its symptoms and encourage people to get tested for sepsis if they think they might have it. It is also aimed at doctors and nurses who work in hospital settings and those who work in health care facilities such as nursing homes or hospices.
The Global Sepsis Alliance established this awareness day, aiming to provide global leadership to reduce the worldwide burden of sepsis. The organization works with healthcare professionals, researchers, and policymakers worldwide to increase knowledge on how it can be treated and prevent its occurrence in hospitals and the community.
Fast Facts about Sepsis
Sepsis arises when the body’s response to an infection injures its tissues and organs. It may lead to shock, multi-organ failure, and death – especially if not recognized early and treated promptly. Sepsis is the final common pathway to death from most infectious diseases worldwide, including viruses such as SARS-CoV-2.
Sepsis starts as an infection that gets out of control and can lead to tissue damage, organ failure, and death. According to the Sepsis Alliance, Sepsis has been named the most expensive in-patient cost in American hospitals at an average of over $18,000 per hospital stay and over 1.5 million sepsis-related hospital stays. With more than 270,000 lives lost annually, sepsis ranks as the third leading cause of death in the U.S. (after heart disease and cancer).
Using data by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), sepsis would rank higher than chronic lower respiratory diseases, stroke, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, and accidental deaths. There are more than 1.7 million cases of sepsis yearly, and survivors often face long-term effects post-sepsis, including amputations, anxiety, memory loss, chronic pain and fatigue, and more. Sepsis is also the most expensive in-hospital condition in the U.S., costing an estimated $62 billion each year, counting just acute care in-hospital and skilled nursing costs.
- 47-50 million cases per year
- At least 11 million deaths per year
- 1 in 5 deaths worldwide is associated with sepsis
- Sepsis is the number one cause of death in hospitals
- Sepsis is the number one cause of hospital readmissions
- $62 billion is spent on sepsis healthcare costs in the US alone
- Up to 50% of sepsis survivors suffer from long-term physical and/or psychological effects
- 40% of Sepsis cases are children under 5
- 80% of sepsis cases occur outside of a hospital
- Sepsis is always caused by an infection like pneumonia or diarrheal illness
Sepsis Prevention with the ViSi Mobile Monitoring System
Every cut, scrape, or break in the skin – including surgical incisions – can allow bacteria to enter the body that could cause an infection. For this reason, infection prevention begins with ensuring that all wounds be cleaned as quickly as possible and kept clean as they heal. They should also be monitored for signs of an infection. Signs and symptoms include changes in vital signs such as an increased heart rate, lower blood pressure, fever, confusion, and shortness of breath.
Often the signs of this uncontrolled infection can be missed with spot-check monitoring which only looks at a snapshot of the patient's current vital signs. By evaluating the vital sign trends versus a single snapshot, patients with developing sepsis can be identified and treated before it progresses to life-threatening septic shock.
Using your hospital’s wireless infrastructure, ViSi Mobile, a vital sign surveillance monitoring system, allows beside staff to keep their eye on life while performing their daily tasks. This is accomplished by point of care, real-time vital sign data sent to a centralized monitor.
The ViSi Mobile Monitoring System is intended for use by clinicians and medically qualified personnel for single or multi-parameter vital signs monitoring of adult patients. The ViSi Mobile System has received CE mark and is FDA cleared for continuous monitoring of ECG, Heart/Pulse Rate, SpO2, Blood Pressure (cuff-based and cuffless on a beat-to-beat basis), Respiration Rate, and Skin Temperature in hospital-based facilities; including general medical-surgical floors, intermediate care floors, and emergency departments. The ViSi Mobile Monitoring System may be used as standalone devices or networked to a ViSi Mobile Remote Viewer through wireless 802.11 communication.
The patient-worn ViSi Mobile monitor itself is the primary alarming device. When networked, the alarms are propagated to the ViSi Mobile Remote Viewer. The ViSi Mobile System has been designed to reduce the number of non-actionable alarms per patient. Clinical alarms will annunciate based on configured parameter thresholds and delays set by the clinical staff. The majority of technical alarms (alerts) will only visually annunciate.
By integrating ViSi Mobile with your hospital’s other technology, alarms can also be sent to staff phones and data can be uploaded into patient electronic medical records. See how Sotera can help with continuous, real-time vital sign monitoring while minimizing patient disruption.
Sources:
https://www.cdc.gov/sepsis/index.html
https://www.global-sepsis-alliance.org/
https://www.worldsepsisday.org/toolkits