Timing of Death in Children Referred for Intensive Care With Sepsis: Comparison of Two Cohorts in the United Kingdom,...

To review the timing of death in children with sepsis referred for intensive care, 2018-2023, and compare with our previous 2005-2011 practice. We hypothesized that most deaths occur within 24 hours of referral to the PICU, with many before PICU admission.

We reviewed referrals to the Children's Acute Transport Service (CATS), North Thames regional pediatric intensive care transport service in the United Kingdom, between January 2018 and March 2023. We included referrals of children (younger than 16 yr) with a working diagnosis of "sepsis," "severe sepsis," "septicemia," or "septic shock." The primary outcome measure was time to death up to a year after referral.

Over the 62-month study period, 11,231 referrals were made to CATS, and 330 (3%) met the study inclusion criteria. Outcome data were available on 272, of whom 29 (11%) died in the first year after referral, which compares favorably with our 2005-2011 cohort from the same service in which the 1-year mortality was 21% (130/627): mean difference 10% (95% CI, 4.8-14.6%), p value equals 0.0003. Eighteen of the 29 deaths occurred in the first 24 hours after referral. Amongst children with comorbidities 12 of 139 (9%) died compared to 6 of 133 (5%) previously healthy children ( p = 0.22 Fisher exact test, odds ratio [OR] 2.0 with 95% CI, 0.73-5.5). By 1 year, mortality in children with comorbidities was 19 of 139 (13.9%) vs. mortality in previously healthy children of 10 of 133 (7.5%) ( p = 0.12; OR 1.8 [95% CI, 0.82-4.1]).

In 2018-2023, the proportion of referrals for PICU retrieval with a clinical diagnosis of "sepsis" was low at 3%. As with our 2005-2011 cohort, most deaths occurred within 24 hours of first referral. Therefore, early recognition and resuscitation still have the greatest potential for improving sepsis outcomes, which has implications for clinical trials.