The Children’s Hospital Association has created a resource to support hospitals with early identification and treatment of sepsis among pediatric patients.
The “change package” resource was created through the Improving Pediatric Sepsis Outcomes collaborative, which brought together data and strategies from more than 66 hospitals that treated 100,000 sepsis cases over eight years. Through evidence-based strategies, the IPSO bundle is estimated to have saved 570 lives, according to an April 21 news release.
The IPSO change package resources includes evidence-based strategies to reduce pediatric deaths, best practices for implementation, guidance for measuring performance and sepsis tools from high-performing hospitals.
Sepsis is notoriously difficult to recognize and can be even harder to identify in children. Around 7,000 children die annually in the U.S. from sepsis.
“Pediatric sepsis is a leading cause of death in children, but even if a child survives, the repercussions can be severe,” Torey Mack, MD, chief medical officer at the CHA, said in a statement. “Many who live through sepsis develop new chronic medical conditions and face life-changing disabilities like amputation, hearing loss or cognitive impairment. That’s what makes these strategies from the IPSO collaborative so groundbreaking.”
