The ‘s’ word: a killer, or just a way infection can kill?

Early this year, a publication in The Lancet analysed the global, regional and national incidence of sepsis-related mortality (Rudd et al, 2020), which is an important step forward in sepsis research. Prior to this study, our sense of the scale of sepsis incidence has always been extrapolated from hospital data in wealthier countries, and has usually excluded children or only covered a limited time period, making the data difficult to generalise. The lengths to which our esteemed colleagues stretched to compile, analyse and interpret the data they gathered is an impressive undertaking for which each and every clinician globally owes them a debt of gratitude.

In the UK, however, the findings of this study are in danger of misuse in popular media, and potentially even in the clinical context as health professionals discuss sepsis with patients and their families. This brief comment will attempt to address this concern, so that the relevance of Rudd et al (2020) is demystified for clinicians and patients.