The worrying rise in deaths from sepsis in Britain may be due to some doctors not taking the condition seriously, according to Britain’s top sepsis expert.
The life-threatening condition occurs when the immune system overreacts to an infection and begins to damage the body’s tissues and organs. Over the past decade, the number of deaths from it has skyrocketed – from 37,000 per year in 2013 to around 48,000 now.
Despite repeated awareness campaigns aimed at speeding diagnosis and treatment, sepsis now causes more deaths than breast, prostate and colon cancer combined.
While the rise is partly due to an aging population and hospitals recording more cases of sepsis than before, the blame may also fall on a significant number of skeptical doctors, according to Dr Ron Daniels, founder and chief executive of the charity UK Sepsis Trust who believe the crisis is ‘all hype and hysteria’.
The issue comes after a case came to light of a 30-year-old primary school teacher who died of sepsis late last year after her infection was mistaken for a virus. Gina Campanini’s family believes more could have been done to save her life.
Gina Campanini, left, pictured with her sister Maria, suffered a stroke and died of sepsis
On a Monday morning in September, Gina, from Hertfordshire, woke up with what she thought was flu. She suffered from a tight chest, muscle pain and high fever. By Thursday, her symptoms had worsened, so she made an appointment with her GP for later that day.
“She was told it was probably just a virus,” said her sister Maria, 26, a charity worker from London. “Gina was not medicated; she was told to go home, drink plenty of fluids and monitor her symptoms.”
Her condition worsened overnight, and the next morning, when she began having trouble breathing, her parents took her to the hospital.
By that stage, Gina had developed sepsis and was admitted to intensive care. Sepsis can be caused by common viruses such as influenza, Covid or, as in Gina’s case, bacterial infection group A streptococcus, also known as streptococcus A.
She was treated with antibiotics but suffered a stroke as a result of the sepsis and just over a week after being admitted to hospital, Gina died. Her family does not blame the GP for Gina’s death, but wonders why her health and youth, combined with severe symptoms, did not cause more concern.
“Gina was young, fit and healthy, so the fact that she became so ill so quickly should certainly have raised alarm bells,” says Maria. “Maybe if Gina was advised to go to the emergency room sooner, or if she knew the symptoms of sepsis, she might still be with us.”
Sepsis is caused by the body overreacting to an infection, leading to a collapse in blood pressure and organ failure.
It can occur at any age, but is most common in the elderly, and urinary tract infections are among the most common triggers.
Bacterial infections are one of the most common causes of sepsis. Blood tests may show an increase in the number of white blood cells, indicating that an infection is present
There is no effective test to detect sepsis. Most NHS doctors diagnose it based on problems such as temperature and heart rate. Blood tests to look for an increase in the number of white blood cells, which indicates that an infection is present, are also used, but the result can take hours to get and may not be accurate.
In 2013, the UK’s health ombudsman warned that the NHS’s failure to identify sepsis patients was leading to avoidable deaths, including among children. In response, the government launched an advertising campaign to raise awareness of the early symptoms, which included slurred speech, discolored skin and severe shortness of breath. It also offered NHS hospitals £100,000 a year to track how quickly sepsis patients were given antibiotics.
Studies show that fast drug delivery is crucial for improving survival. Before the scheme in 2016, only a third of sepsis patients received antibiotics within an hour. By 2019, this figure had risen to 80 percent. But the Covid pandemic put an end to this improvement.
“When the pandemic started, the NHS stopped keeping this sepsis data because there just weren’t enough resources,” says Dr Daniels. “We’re back to where we started.”
Last October, an ombudsman report found the NHS was making ‘the same mistakes’ and needed ‘significant improvements’ to reduce the number of avoidable deaths from sepsis.
Dr. Daniels says a major problem is that many doctors still don’t take sepsis seriously. He points to a 2019 article in the medical journal The Lancet entitled: ‘Sepsis hysteria: excess hype and unrealistic expectations.’
The scientists involved claimed that the majority of sepsis victims were older, vulnerable people whose deaths should not be considered preventable. The paper warned that the push to prescribe antibiotics to suspected sepsis patients within an hour would lead to ‘excessive, inappropriate’ antibiotic use that would fuel resistance – with bacteria evolving to become resistant to the drugs.
It also pointed to the fact that only around 150 children die from sepsis every year in Britain as evidence that the concerns were unfounded.
Gina Campanini’s family believes more could have been done to save 30-year-old’s life
The paper’s lead author, Professor Mervyn Singer, an intensive care specialist at University College London, told the MoS he stands by these conclusions.
“Sepsis has built up like this monster, but it’s not nearly as bad as it seems,” he says. “Most people who die from sepsis are about to die anyway, and the condition is just the final nail in the coffin.”
Dr. Daniels disagrees, pointing out that studies suggest just under half of all cases of sepsis occur in working-age adults. “There are many health professionals who say that sepsis has been prioritized over the past decade at the expense of other diseases,” he says. ‘But the fact is that we are facing a serious crisis.
‘Patients with sepsis should be given antibiotics as soon as possible, but too often this is not done, leading to avoidable deaths.
‘It’s frustrating that little has changed. Around 48,000 people die from sepsis every year – this cannot continue.’