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Mortality from sepsis remains high, despite emphasis on early detection and treatment. To assess for potential future interventions, investigators did an in-depth review of medical records for more than 1000 randomly selected patients from 28 hospitals in 10 U.S. states. All patients had billing codes for severe sepsis or septic shock; the analysis focused on onset of sepsis, culprit pathogens, risk factors, and outcomes. Community-onset was defined as onset of sepsis within 3 days of hospital admission.
Most patients (median age, 64) had at least one comorbidity. More than 90% of patients had community-onset sepsis, and nearly half met diagnostic criteria for sepsis while in the emergency department. Sepsis-associated pathogens were identif…