Abstract
The incidence of sepsis and the number of sepsis-related deaths are increasing, making sepsis the leading cause of death in critically ill patients in Europe and the U.S.A. Delayed recognition of sepsis and inappropriate initial antibiotic therapy are associated with an increase in mortality and morbidity. Rapid and accurate identification of sepsis and its causative organisms are a prerequisite for successful therapy. The current gold standard for the diagnosis of sepsis is culture of blood and other body fluids or tissues. However, even in severe sepsis, blood cultures (BC) yield the causative microorganism in only 20-40% of patients. Moreover, at least 24 hours are needed to get preliminary information about the potential organism. Therefore, novel laboratory methods for the diagnosis of sepsis, such as multiplex real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR), matrix-assisted laser desorption ionisation (MALDI) time-of-flight (TOF) mass spectrometry (MS) (MALDI-TOF MS) and calorimetry, have been developed and evaluated.
Highlights
Sepsis is a life-threatening condition caused by the uncontrolled, systemic, inflammatory response to bacterial, viral or fungal infection [1,2,3,4,5]
The findings showed that SeptiFast gave a positive result slightly more often compared to blood culture
Several long-term benefits can be anticipated from improvements in the diagnosis of sepsis
Summary
Nora Schauba, Reno Freib, Christian Muellerc a Department of Medicine, Division of Gastroenterology, University Hospital Basel, Switzerland b Department of Laboratory Medicine, Division of Clinical Microbiology, University Hospital Basel, Switzerland c Department of Medicine, Division of Cardiology, University Hospital Basel, Switzerland
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