ew Delhi: According to a study released on Tuesday, cancer and dementia are the leading risk factors for mortality among sepsis patients referred to an emergency medical facility.
Sepsis, a life-threatening emergency induced by a dysregulated host immunological response to an infection, is a global health crisis that claims millions of lives each year. The urgency of addressing this issue cannot be overstated.
The study, headed by a team of Danish researchers, discovered that age and heart disease were the other factors that can increase the chance of death in sepsis patients within two years.
“We found that certain factors increased the risk of death after sepsis, including, not surprisingly, advanced age,” said Dr Finn E. Nielsen, a senior scientist in the Department of Clinical Epidemiology at Aarhus University Hospital, Denmark.
“Additionally, conditions such as dementia, heart disease, cancer, and previous hospitalisation with sepsis within the last six months before admission also elevated the risk of dying during a median follow-up period of two years,” Nielsen said.
In the paper presented at the European Emergency Medicine Congress in Copenhagen, the team examined deaths over a long follow-up period in a prospective study of 714 adult patients admitted to the emergency department with sepsis between October 2017 and the end of March 2018.
The team found that after a median of two years, 361 (50.6 per cent) of the patients with sepsis had died from any cause, including sepsis. This underscores the severity of sepsis and the need for improved prevention and treatment strategies.
Older age increases the risk of death by 4 percent for every additional year of age.
Furthermore, a history of cancer more than doubled the risk (121 percent), and ischaemic heart disease (a condition in which the arteries supplying blood to the heart narrow or become blocked by a build-up of fat) increased the risk by 39 percent, dementia increased the risk by 90 percent, and previous admission with sepsis within the last six months increased the risk by 48 percent.
Dr Nielsen Emphasises the importance of recognising sepsis as a serious illness with high mortality. This understanding is crucial for early detection and prompt treatment, potentially saving lives.
As the study was carried out in a single centre, further research in larger, prospective studies is needed, the team said.
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–IANS
