More Die From Sepsis Than From Strokes or Heart Attacks

by Heidi Stevenson

8 January 2010

A report by the Canadian Institute for Health Information reports that death resulting from sepsis infections is more likely than death by either strokes or heart attacks. About one-third of all severe sepsis cases result from hospital-acquired infections. Hospitals and antibiotics are supposed to save lives. So, why are so many people dying of severe infections?

Sepsis, also known as bacteremia, is an infection, usually bacterial, that enters the bloodstream—though it can also be a viral or fungal infection. It's an infection that's out of control, one that the body is unable to hea–a devasting condition that can lead to death very quickly.

The Numbers

The study reports that sepsis caused 9,320 deaths in Canadian hospitals during one year. During the same time period, 6,423 died of strokes and 5,684 of heart attacks in hospitals. That is about 31% more deaths from sepsis than strokes and 39% more than heart attacks.

People who developed sepsis while in the hospital were more likely to die of it, indicating that they'd either gotten more virulent infections or the treatments themselves were causing problems that lead to death. The report is silent on this.

54.6% of sepsis deaths were men and 45.4% women. The mortality rate over a five year span was fairly stable, averaging from 29-30 percent. The very young, under age one, and the elderly were most likely to contract sepsis, as shown in the graph below:

As the graph clearly documents, the risk drops sharply shortly after the first year of life, stabilizes until adulthood, and increases until about age 80, at which point it starts to decrease.

Death occurs 56% more often in patients who develop sepsis after entering the hospital.

Methods of resolving the loss of life through sepsis focus on identifying it earlier to allow earlier antibiotic treatment. According to Dr. Marc Francis of Foothills Medical Centre in Calgary, Alberta, "For every hour delay of sepsis shock before you get antibiotics on board, survival has been shown to decrease by 7.5%."

Why?

So what's going on? Why are so many dying from infections? Wasn't that supposed to stop happening with the vaunted antibiotics?

It's obvious that something is very wrong with the concept. As we've seen, the more aggressively antibiotics are used, the more drug-resistant they become. The rate of hospital-acquired sepsis is increasing.

It appears that the medical profession has put us into a degenerative loop with its use of antibiotics and antivirals. By using them aggressively, drug-resistant and more virulent varieties of infections have developed, and they've moved outside hospitals. The treatment for these infections has been more drugs, resulting in more antibiotic-resistance.

As a result, we now have more cases of sepsis. More people enter hospitals without infections, and then die from ones acquired in them, and more infections becoming septic.

The method used by Foothills Medical Centre to lessen the sepsis death rate is ultimately doomed to failure. As we've seen, the more aggressively drugs are used, the more aggressive the bacteria, viruses, and funguses become.

What Can Be Done?

It's far past time for modern medicine to face reality. Most pharmaceutical treatments have not been shown to extend life. Now, we're seeing that they're causing a great deal of harm. Biting the bullet, like Norway has done, has proven to be effective. Their citizens are not dying from lack of antibiotics, and they almost never die from drug-resistant antibiotics.

Modern medicine must stop trying to solve the problems it creates by returning to the source of those problems. The massive overuse of pharmaceuticals must be stopped.