Vague Presenting Symptoms Are Associated with Increased Mortality in Septic Shock

Sepsis can be both deadly and difficult to recognize. It is not clear whether treatment delays, such as delayed antibiotic administration, reflect poor recognition, poor quality care, or something else. To examine whether absence of explicit infectious presenting symptoms (fever, chills, rigors, productive cough, dysuria, or skin infection) is associated with delayed antibiotic administration or increased mortality, researchers reviewed records for 654 adult patients at a single academic hospital who met Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services definition of septic shock.

Overall, 409 patients presented to the emergency department with explicit symptoms and 245 (37%) with only vague symptoms (e.g., weakness, fatigue, abdominal pain without…