Sccottish sepsis campaign in reduced deaths drive

Dr Dan Beckett and Dr Claire Gordon are seeking to raise awareness of sepsis, a potentially fatal illness. Picture: Malcolm McCurrach

The initiative, which will see doctors cycling from Scotland to London, hopes to raise awareness of the symptoms of the devastating illness, which causes major organ failure and often death.

There are concerns that lack of awareness about the condition, which kills 37,000 people across the UK each year, is hampering efforts to reduce mortality rates in hospital.

Healthcare Improvement Scotland, along with the UK Sepsis Trust, have now launched a bid to highlight sepsis to both the public and doctors to speed up access to treatment.

Sepsis is a life-threatening condition caused when the body’s response to an infection goes into overdrive and injures its own tissues and organs.

The condition can affect anyone, but is most common in the very old, very young and pregnant women, being a major cause of death in expectant mothers who already have a suppressed immune system.

And the ageing population means that cases of sepsis are set to rise, but efforts are now focussing on trying to reduce the number of people who die as a result.

Symptoms include slurred speech, really painful muscles, breathlessness, mottled and discoloured skin and not passing urine. Sufferers often feel so bad they think they are dying.

Professor Kevin Rooney, an intensive care consultant and HIS clinical advisor, said sepsis was a major problem and speeding up access to treatment was vital to reduce deaths fromm the condition, which kills at least 3,700 people in Scotland a year but is likely to be higher as it is not always recorded as the cause of death.

Prof Rooney said: “Someone going to hospital with a heart attack has a mortality rate of 5 per cent, and someone suffering a major trauma accident has 3 per cent mortality rate.

“But for sepsis the mortality rate is 15 per cent, rising to 30 per cent for severe sepsis and 50 per cent for septic shock - the most serious form of the condition.”

As part of the new campaign, acute medicine consultants Dr Dan Beckett and Dr Claire Gordon are cycling from Scotland to London, with social media being used on their trip to highlight sepsis symptoms along the way.

Dr Beckett said: “Sepsis kills around 37,000 people every year in the UK, and equates to 82 deaths for every mile of our cycle journey.

“Scotland already has a national programme for improving the outcomes from sepsis and is therefore ahead of the field in the early diagnosis and reliable delivery of care for the many thousands of people affected by this life threatening condition.

“As clinicians working in acute medicine, we see firsthand the devastating impact sepsis can have on patients and their families, and we want to do everything we can to prevent sepsis, and to ensure that anyone who develops sepsis receives the best possible care.”