A sirs-based automated alarm system for the diagnosis of sepsis after burn injury

The present study examined the effectiveness of an automated systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS)-based alarm system for the early detection of sepsis in adult burn patients. In addition, the relevance of the sepsis criteria from the American Burn Association (ABA) and the Third International Consensus Definitions for Sepsis and Septic Shock (Sepsis-3) for this patient group was determined. In this prospective observational study, we included 41 consecutive patients who were admitted to our burn ICU within a one-year period. SIRS alarms were calculated for these patients according to predefined criteria using the PREDEC ALARM automated alarm system and alarms generated according to ABA criteria and daily Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (SOFA) results. The alarms were not visible to the treating doctors and nurses. The alarms identified were related to episodes of sepsis with positive blood cultures. Twenty-one sepsis events were recorded in 41 patients. The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve revealed an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.72 for alarms using 2 SIRS criteria, 0.77 for 3 SIRS criteria, and 0.61 for 4 SIRS criteria. AUC values of 0.53 and 0.59 were calculated for the ABA criteria and Sepsis-3 definition, respectively. An alarm system using 3 SIRS criteria proved to be suitable for the early detection of sepsis in burn patients. The frequent number of false alarms requires further refinement of the alarm system. Based on the results of our study, the ABA criteria and the Sepsis-3 definition provide no advantages over the SIRS criteria in the early diagnosis of sepsis after burn injury.