Patients with lethal sepsis are being failed by hospitals

HOSPITALS are missing symptoms of sepsis and failing to give patients antibiotics quickly enough, an investigation has found.

At some acute hospital trusts in England, NHS workers are failing to spot the signs of suspected sepsis in half of patients. Figures obtained by the BBC’S Panorama programme show that 24 NHS acute hospital trusts failed to administer intravenous antibiotics within an hour to half the patients considered to need the treatment.

The NHS advises that antibiotic treatment should begin within an hour of diagnosis to reduce the risk of serious complications or death.

The figures also showed 14 acute hospital trusts in England failed to spot signs of suspected sepsis in half of patients, while around 10 hospital trusts said they were identifying every suspected case from the total sampled.

Sepsis kills around 44,000 people in the UK each year, and happens when the body’s immune system goes into overdrive when it suffers an infection. Antibiotics are the main treatment. When it is detected early, tablets can be taken at home, but in severe cases antibiotics are administered intravenously.

Dr Ron Daniels, chief executive of the Sepsis Trust, said: “The scale of this problem is enormous. Sepsis affects a quarter of a million people across the UK every year and it causes more deaths than breast cancer, bowel cancer and prostate cancer put together.”

Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, told the programme: “I wouldn’t pretend that we get this right everywhere. We’re on a journey, we definitely need to do a lot better but I think we have made significant progress.”