Diagnosing Sepsis in the Intensive Care Unit: A Retrospective Cohort Study

• DOI: 10.21203/rs.2.24071/v1
• Publication Date: 2020-02-20T21:50:58Z
• Authors: Kerina Denny; Ross Lindell-Innes; Aaron Heffernan; David L. Paterson; John F Mcnamara; Jeffrey Lipman
• Keywords: Blood Culture; Organ dysfunction; Bacteremia

Abstract Background: Sepsis is defined as life-threatening organ dysfunction caused by a dysregulated host response to infection. In the intensive care unit (ICU), common. The challenge lies in determining when can be attributed We aimed retrospectively determine what proportion of patients commenced on antibiotics for presumed sepsis mixed ICU had blood-culture positive sepsis, negative or an aseptic mimic.Methods: One hundred antibiotic naïve who were clinically deemed have infection enrolled. Retrospective interpretation clinical history, biochemical, and microbiological data was performed three clinicians from fields infectious disease differentiate infective non-infective insults.Results: There good interrater reliability amongst clinician assessors using this approach (Krippendorf’s alpha 0.868) retrospective diagnosis examined cohort, 35 percent met criteria blood culture positivity additional 41 assessed having probable sepsis. Twenty-four determined not sepsis.Conclusions: Misdiagnosis cause false attribution has significant research implications, highlights need accurate point-of-care diagnostic tools.