September is Sepsis Awareness Month

Posted on: 9/21/16

The potential to save lives through early identification and early implementation of evidence-based practice is tremendous if treated in accordance with the Surviving Sepsis Campaign Bundles. Sepsis is the leading cause of death from infection and its incidence is rising. In the U.S., sepsis accounted for more than 10 billion dollars in hospital costs in 2011.

The Surviving Sepsis Campaign is a joint collaboration of the Society of Critical Care Medicine and the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine, committed to reducing mortality from severe sepsis and septic shock worldwide.

Initiated in 2002 at the ESICM’s annual meeting with the Barcelona Declaration, the Campaign progressed in phases that have expanded the scope and reach of the Campaign via publication of three editions of evidence-based guidelines, implementation of a performance improvement program, and analysis and publication of data from more than 30,000 patient charts collected around the world. The group’s recommendations have been endorsed by more than 30 medical societies from six continents, spanning disciplines from critical care and emergency medicine to infectious disease and family practice.

The Surviving Sepsis Campaign is recommitted to increasing the number of hospitals contributing data to 10,000 worldwide, to applying the guidelines to 100 percent of patients in whom the diagnosis is suspected, and to developing a strategy to improve the care of septic patients in under resourced areas.

For more information on the Surviving Sepsis Campaign, click here. (LaWanna Halstead)