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Rescue treatments are symptomatic. Which makes a lot of sense, if you consider what (medically) constitutes "sepsis." Any ED resident on their first week on the job should know how to diagnose sepsis: Temp >38°C (100.4°F) or <36°C (96.8°F), Heart rate >90, Respiratory rate >20 or PaCO₂ <32 mm Hg, WBC >12,000/mm³, <4,000/mm³, or >10% bands, Infection (suspected or present). Double down on the blood work, take liquor, empirically give antibiotics (less and less useful, given resistances), drop temperature (paracetamol), add fluids (drops heart rate, ups blood pressure), wait for labs. It's not hard, and I am so very sorry someone with sepsis signs was sent home. Sepsis is also a fast bastard. Meaning, from pathogen entering the blood stream to organ damage and conclusively death can be less than half an hour. That's the ones we can't catch. The guy with the ulcer, the person who injects things, the girl who didn't see a dentist about her developing abscess, the man who stopped his HIV meds... that's the ones I didn't in the past three weeks. I got them too late, or didn't see them until the ambulance unloaded a dead person. Sepsis is a bitch. A total and utter bad player, something we drill into every resident from day one. Sometimes Mrs. Goodforall comes in with a light chest tightness and leaves on a hearse, sometimes Mr. Bluebird presents with nausea and crashes into a full on septic shock minutes later. Any one of those I can prevent, I will. I am, however, not God. Just a ED jockey with an infectious disease background. I'm probably the best hope my patients have, which isn't much, but it's something. |