Sepsis: Changing Definitions, Unchanging Treatment

Area of Science:

• Pediatric critical care medicine
• Infectious disease epidemiology
• Global health

Background:

• Sepsis-3 definitions, recently revised, were validated using adult data from high-income countries.
• Sepsis and septic shock remain significant causes of global mortality, particularly in children in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).

Purpose of the Study:

• To address the urgent need for standardized sepsis criteria applicable to diverse pediatric populations.
• To facilitate evaluation of sepsis treatment strategies and improve clinical outcomes in children globally, across various healthcare settings.

Main Methods:

• The study emphasizes the necessity of developing and validating new criteria.
• Focus on pediatric populations in both high-income and LMIC settings.
• Inclusion of both intensive care unit (ICU) and non-ICU patients.

Main Results:

• Current Sepsis-3 criteria may not be universally applicable to pediatric patients, especially in LMICs.
• There is a critical gap in validated, standardized sepsis definitions for children worldwide.
• The lack of such criteria hinders effective assessment of treatment impacts.

Conclusions:

• Standardized, validated sepsis criteria for pediatric patients across different global settings are essential.
• Development of these criteria is a prerequisite for improving global child survival rates from sepsis.
• This work will enable better evaluation of interventions to combat pediatric sepsis.