Gauging New Guidance for Sepsis

Earlier this year, new guidelines were released to improve the diagnosis of pediatric sepsis and septic shock. For the first time, the novel Phoenix sepsis criteria provide an objective and data-driven approach to aid in the identification of these life-threatening conditions, including prediction of mortality in children with suspected or confirmed infection. Sepsis is one of the leading causes of death among children worldwide, and these guidelines could be a major step in changing outcomes.

To help us understand these guidelines and apply them to your practice, we are joined by two experts who have been at the forefront of this new research. Tell Bennett, MD, specializes in pediatric critical care at Children’s Hospital Colorado. He is the Vice Chair of Clinical Informatics and a professor of biomedical informatics and pediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. Halden Scott, MD, is the Director of Research for the section of emergency medicine at Children’s Colorado. She is also an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.

In this episode, our experts discuss the background and future for the new sepsis criteria:  

• Why sepsis definitions have evolved over the last decade
• How to diagnosis sepsis under the new guidelines
• How these criteria can be applied to primary care practices
• What sepsis treatment options are and why time is of the essence