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What do you know about sepsis? Until yesterday I didn’t know much about it, but coming across three articles in a row within a couple days got my attention.

When I get that many messages on a topic, I know I’m meant to write about it.

I realized I’d been hearing of increasing numbers of people hospitalized because of sepsis. Then it struck me that I actually knew a few people who had died of it, but I hadn’t taken the time to find out what it was.

Sometimes sepsis is incorrectly referred to as blood poisoning, but the term for that is actually septicemia so you can understand why they get mixed up.

According to an NIH publication, sepsis “is caused by an overwhelming immune response to infection. The body releases immune chemicals into the blood to combat the infection. Those chemicals trigger widespread inflammation, which leads to blood clots and leaky blood vessels. As a result, blood flow is impaired, and that deprives organs of nutrients and oxygen and leads to organ damage.”

Massive organ damage can, of course, lead to death.

An article in Vim & Vigor, a publication of the University of Virginia Health System, was one of those recent articles that got my attention. The article began as follows: “Each year, almost 260,000 lives are lost to sepsis—only heart disease and cancer cause more deaths in the U.S.”

How could I NOT know more about the third leading cause of death in the US? I felt like I was disconnected from the world.

Then I decided to fact-check. The half dozen sites I reviewed do indeed show heart disease as the #1 killer at 635,000 people in 2017, with cancer right behind at 598,000. But accidents showed up as #3 at 161,000, chronic lower respiratory issues at 154,000 for #4, and stroke at 142,000 rounded out the top five.

Sepsis was not named in the top five. I didn’t think that UVA could make such a blunder.

Then in further checking the National Institute of Health informational page on sepsis, I found this: “Severe sepsis strikes more than a million Americans every year, and 15 to 30 percent of those people die.”

Hmm…I think I can do that math in my head. 15% of a million is 150,000 and 30% is 300,000 which would indeed place sepsis in the top five. And using the 30% figure would make it #3.

I cannot explain the disconnect as to why the “leading death causes in the US” sites don’t talk about sepsis.

NIH does state that both awareness and tracking of sepsis are increasing. People are living longer, and the chronically ill and the “elderly” (don’t get me started) are more prone to develop it. But anyone at any age can get it.

Sepsis is sneaky in that it’s not easily diagnosed. Many of the symptoms are common to other conditions: fever, shivering with chills, rapid breathing and heart rate, rash, confusion, pale skin, pain, disorientation.

The disease is treated with antibiotics and fluids as doctors try to stop the infection while protecting the vital organs. But NIH tells us that, “Despite years of research, scientists have not yet developed a medicine that specifically targets the aggressive immune response seen with sepsis.”

And the treatment currently offered is expensive, usually involving intensive care stay and high-cost therapy. Again, NIH notes that “The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality lists sepsis as the most expensive condition treated in U.S. hospitals, costing nearly $24 billion in 2013.”

Certainly, not everyone dies from sepsis, and yet we see that it indeed can be a killer.

Be informed. Gain additional information from the sites below, and for Pete’s sake, take care of yourself.

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Center for Disease Control statistics on causes of death in the US in 2017

National Institute of Health informational page on sepsis

Next Avenue article on the death of Patty Duke from sepsis