Sepsis - Diagnostic Perspectives for Clinical Microbiology Laboratories

Sepsis is the most common cause of mortality in many hospitals and is most often caused by blood stream infections. The major contributor to death is delayed initiation of effective antimicrobial therapy, with each hour of delay associated with increased mortality. Therefore, the investigation of suspected sepsis is one of the most important and urgent functions of the clinical microbiology laboratory. Typically, antimicrobial therapy is initiated empirically, which means the patient’s outcome is dependent on best-guess therapy during the most critical period of management. With conventional processing, it can take approximately 3 days for the laboratory to report antimicrobial susceptibility test (AST) results. Increasing antimicrobial resistance makes the choice of empirical therapy increasingly difficult. Therefore, the laboratory challenge is to help reduce sepsis-associated mortality by ensuring the early availability of accurate AST results. This can be achieved through rapid pathogen detection, identification, and AST results. This presentation will provide a review of optimal microbiological diagnostic approaches for routine investigation of suspected sepsis.

 

On completion of this webinar, participants will be able to: