Abstract
BackgroundConsidering morbidity, mortality, and annual treatment costs, the dramatic rise in the incidence of sepsis and septic shock among intensive care unit (ICU) admissions in US hospitals is an increasing concern. Recent changes in the sepsis definition (sepsis-3), based on the quick Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (qSOFA), have motivated the international medical informatics research community to investigate score recalculation and information retrieval, and to study the intersection between sepsis-3 and the previous definition (sepsis-2) based on systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS) parameters.ObjectiveThe objective of this study was three-fold. First, we aimed to unpack the most prevalent criterion for sepsis (for both sepsis-3 and sepsis-2 predictors). Second, we intended to determine the most prevalent sepsis scenario in the ICU among 4 possible scenarios for qSOFA and 11 possible scenarios for SIRS. Third, we investigated the multicollinearity or dichotomy among qSOFA and SIRS predictors.MethodsThis observational study was conducted according to the most recent update of Medical Information Mart for Intensive Care (MIMIC-III, Version 1.4), the critical care database developed by MIT. The qSOFA (sepsis-3) and SIRS (sepsis-2) parameters were analyzed for patients admitted to critical care units from 2001 to 2012 in Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (Boston, MA, USA) to determine the prevalence and underlying relation between these parameters among patients undergoing sepsis screening. We adopted a multiblind Delphi method to seek a rationale for decisions in several stages of the research design regarding handling missing data and outlier values, statistical imputations and biases, and generalizability of the study.ResultsAltered mental status in the Glasgow Coma Scale (59.28%, 38,854/65,545 observations) was the most prevalent sepsis-3 (qSOFA) criterion and the white blood cell count (53.12%, 17,163/32,311 observations) was the most prevalent sepsis-2 (SIRS) criterion confronted in the ICU. In addition, the two-factored sepsis criterion of high respiratory rate (≥22 breaths/minute) and altered mental status (28.19%, among four possible qSOFA scenarios besides no sepsis) was the most prevalent sepsis-3 (qSOFA) scenario, and the three-factored sepsis criterion of tachypnea, high heart rate, and high white blood cell count (12.32%, among 11 possible scenarios besides no sepsis) was the most prevalent sepsis-2 (SIRS) scenario in the ICU. Moreover, the absolute Pearson correlation coefficients were not significant, thereby nullifying the likelihood of any linear correlation among the critical parameters and assuring the lack of multicollinearity between the parameters. Although this further bolsters evidence for their dichotomy, the absence of multicollinearity cannot guarantee that two random variables are statistically independent.ConclusionsQuantifying the prevalence of the qSOFA criteria of sepsis-3 in comparison with the SIRS criteria of sepsis-2, and understanding the underlying dichotomy among these parameters provides significant inferences for sepsis treatment initiatives in the ICU and informing hospital resource allocation. These data-driven results further offer design implications for multiparameter intelligent sepsis prediction in the ICU.
Highlights
Sepsis remains one of the most elusive syndromes in medical science, which is a syndrome induced by infection and associated with biochemical, physiological, and pathological abnormalities as a result of an unregulated response from the human body [1,2,3]
Altered mental status in the Glasgow Coma Scale (59.28%, 38,854/65,545 observations) was the most prevalent sepsis-3 criterion and the white blood cell count (53.12%, 17,163/32,311 observations) was the most prevalent sepsis-2 (SIRS) criterion confronted in the intensive care unit (ICU)
In the first phase of the study, with respect to the quick Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (qSOFA) criteria, we analyzed the distributions of systolic arterial blood pressure, Glasgow Coma Scale score, and respiratory rate
Summary
Sepsis remains one of the most elusive syndromes in medical science, which is a syndrome induced by infection and associated with biochemical, physiological, and pathological abnormalities as a result of an unregulated response from the human body [1,2,3]. These excruciating statistics have been exacerbated over recent years, as identified in a two-decade study on US hospitalizations, costs, and disease epidemiology These statistics reflect an 8.7% annual increase in the incidence of sepsis among hospitalized patients in the United States [5,9,10]. The hospital costs associated with sepsis still rank first, and sepsis care currently requires more than twice the resources required for other medical conditions [18] These costs are expected to be exacerbated in the near future, and will likely approach a 3-fold increase compared to those of other admissions [3,19,20]. Recent changes in the sepsis definition (sepsis-3), based on the quick Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (qSOFA), have motivated the international medical informatics research community to investigate score recalculation and information retrieval, and to study the intersection between sepsis-3 and the previous definition (sepsis-2) based on systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS) parameters
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