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A UVA Health doctor and other leading national experts have developed important new guidelines to improve care for patients who develop sepsis, a dangerous full-body infection that kills at least 350,000 Americans every year.

Taison Bell, MD, MBA, interim Chair of UVA Health’s Department of Medicine, and colleagues assembled the new guidelines on behalf of the Infectious Diseases Society of America and seven other professional groups. The guidelines aim to standardize and enhance infection-related practices and workflows in hospitals to ensure patients receive the best-possible sepsis care.

“What excites me most about this work is its focus on making high-quality sepsis care more consistent and reliable,” said Bell, part of the Divisions of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine and Infectious Diseases and International Health at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. “By strengthening the systems behind diagnosis, treatment, prevention and quality improvement, we have an opportunity to make a real difference for patients while continuing to evaluate the technologies that could shape the future of sepsis care.”

Sepsis remains a leading cause of serious illness and death despite decades of efforts to improve recognition and treatment. It occurs when a person’s immune response spirals out of control in response to an infection, potentially leading to organ failure and death.

The new guidelines address a vast area of sepsis-related care, including diagnostic testing and pathogen detection, antimicrobial management, infection prevention and surveillance and performance measurement, as well as hospital infrastructure and organizational support. Some of the recommendations:

• implement rapid molecular testing of positive blood cultures;
• ensure immediate antibiotic therapy for patients suffering the life-threatening medical emergency known as septic shock;
• deploy electronic sepsis surveillance; 
• and standardize daily toothbrushing to reduce hospital-acquired pneumonia.

In addition, the guidelines highlight emerging technologies with the potential to improve sepsis care, such as next-generation diagnostics and artificial intelligence-enhanced clinical decision support. The authors caution, however, that these technologies will need further validation before they are widely deployed in hospitals.

The sepsis guidelines have been published in the Clinical Infectious Diseases journal.

The guidelines were developed by representatives from the Infectious Diseases Society of America, the American College of Emergency Physicians, American Society for Microbiology, American Thoracic Society, Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society, Society of Critical Care Medicine, Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America, Society of Hospital Medicine, Society of Infectious Diseases Pharmacists and Sepsis Alliance.

Finding new ways to improve care for patients across Virginia and beyond is a major mission of UVA’s new Paul and Diane Manning Institute of Biotechnology. The institute has been launched to accelerate the development of new drugs and treatments for the most complex and challenging diseases. 

To keep up with the latest medical research news from UVA and the Manning Institute, bookmark Making of Medicine.