Cancer and dementia double the risk of death in sepsis patients - Study
Sepsis Patients Life Expectancy: There is a possibility of complete recovery from sepsis. But during this time, there is a high risk of getting serious complications like cancer, which increases the risk of death.
Sepsis is a serious and life-threatening condition that occurs when the body's immune system responds to an infection. A recent study has shown that cancer and dementia are the major risk factors that increase the risk of mortality in sepsis patients. Every year, this condition claims millions of lives.
The study, conducted by Danish researchers, also found that other factors, such as age and heart disease, increase the risk of death within two years in patients affected by sepsis.
Causes of mortality
Dr. Finn E. Nielsen, senior scientist in the Department of Clinical Epidemiology at Aarhus University Hospital in Denmark, said, "We found that certain factors increase the risk of death after sepsis, including increasing age. In addition, dementia, cancer, heart disease and an increased risk of death in sepsis within six months of hospitalization are common."
Study done on 714 patients
This research was presented at the European Emergency Medicine Congress in Copenhagen. In this, a team conducted a long-term study on 714 adult patients admitted to the emergency department from October 2017 to the end of March 2018. All these patients were suffering from sepsis and the aim of the study was to know how many of these people later died from the disease.
Probability of death
The researchers found that after two years, 361 (50.6 percent) of patients with sepsis died from causes other than sepsis. Specifically, age increased the risk of death by 4 percent, a history of cancer doubled the risk, heart disease increased the risk by 39 percent, patients with dementia increased the risk by 90 percent, and the risk of death within six months of being hospitalized with sepsis increased by 48 percent.