INFECTION PREVENTION
Strategies in healthcare to lower patient risk of sepsis
Chris Smith, Business Development manager at Howorth Air Technology, discusses the issues that cause sepsis in healthcare settings and, as he puts it, ‘how this debilitating and often fatal condition can be minimised by using regimes including automated biocide generators combined with air purification’.
When a patient’s immune system breaks down and allows infection to attack tissues and organs, sepsis becomes a life- threatening condition. In most cases, the infection is bacterial, but can be fungal, or from exposure to parasites or viruses – the primary infection being in the urinary tract, on the surface of the skin, in the lungs, brain, or abdominal organs. Specific symptoms which are often confused at an early stage with sepsis are cough with pneumonia, or painful urination with a kidney infection. General symptoms related to sepsis are typically increased heart and breathing rates, with fever and mental confusion. Certain patients present higher risk of sepsis, for instance those with a weakened immune system from oncology treatment, burns, or major trauma recovery, or those with diabetes. A further factor that can cause confusion and difficulty in diagnosing sepsis is that, with these higher-risk cases, along with paediatric and geriatric
patients, there may be no early symptoms at all, with the individuals concerned exhibiting normal body temperature. When severe, sepsis causes reduced organ function or low blood pressure – which results in septic shock that is unresponsive, even when treated with normal levels of intravenous fluids. Disturbingly, septic shock has been shown to be directly responsible for 39% of ICU deaths in a retrospective study.1
Treatment
Treatment for sepsis, when diagnosed, is normally via intravenous injection of fluids and antibiotics, and with medications such as Midodrine Hydrochloride to raise blood pressure, often in an ICU to avoid further infection. If complications such as renal or respiratory failure occur, dialysis or mechanical ventilation will be required. Pressure or stress ulcers and deep vein thrombosis are also secondary risks which need monitoring during recovery.
How avoidable is sepsis?
Along with all hospital-acquired infections, sepsis is an avoidable challenge. However, the problems facing healthcare professionals are two-fold. Firstly, multidrug antibiotic-resistant species – evolved from over-prescribing these medications – will increase the risk of sepsis, and a crucial strategy in healthcare is to lessen the need to administer such drugs. This issue is indeed global, with a research project in Australia conducted in 2017 concluding that antibiotics for acute respiratory infections were being overprescribed by GPs at up to nine times the rate recommended in clinical guidelines.2
It is, of course. the easy
option for doctors to treat infections with antibiotics. ‘The sweet shop mentality’, which has developed with over- familiarisation, is difficult to break. There are alternatives under investigation, antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) being strong contenders. However,
The 5250 Automatic is Genano’s ‘most advanced and modern air purifier’. Howorth said: “It is the right choice for places where air needs to be decontaminated from microbes, nanosized particles, and gases, ultra-efficiently.
68 Health Estate Journal October 2018
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