When the Initial and Final Diagnoses of Sepsis Don't Agree

Sepsis requires prompt antibacterial therapy and fluid resuscitation, but noninfectious etiologies can mimic the condition, leading to a false-positive diagnosis. The frequency of this occurrence (and the likelihood of discordance between initial and final diagnosis of the infection source) are not well defined. Thus, investigators analyzed a cohort of adult patients meeting the third international consensus sepsis definitions (Sepsis-3). Patients were seen from July 2013 to January 2017 in emergency departments (EDs) at four U.S. hospitals. Trained personnel adjudicated the presence and source of infection and the final diagnosis based on post hoc chart documentation. Noninfectious causes were not delineated. Pneumonia was the most common …