A study published in Critical Care Medicine examined the differences between hospital-onset and community-onset sepsis.
Researchers identified sepsis among adult patients hospitalized during the 2009-15 time period and applied Adult Sepsis Event criteria to EHR data from 136 U.S. hospitals in the Cerner HealthFacts dataset. Of the 2.3 million hospitalized patients studied, 97,352 had sepsis, of which 11,782 (12.1 percent) was hospital-onset sepsis.
Researchers found hospital-onset sepsis was associated with higher risk of hospital death as compared to community-onset sepsis and patients without sepsis.
Additionally, compared community-onset sepsis patients, hospital-onset sepsis:
• Were younger
• Had more comorbidities, including heart failure, renal disease and cancer
• Had higher rates of intra-abdominal infections
• Had more positive blood cultures
• Experienced longer hospital length-of-stay and intensive care unit length-of-stay
"Hospital-onset sepsis accounts for one in eight sepsis cases, increases the risk of death three-fold and carries mortality rates twice as high as community-onset sepsis," study authors concluded.