Pediatrics: Accuracy of a Sepsis Screening Tool in Pediatric Emergency Departments During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Background:Sepsis is an important cause of childhood morbidity and mortali.

Background:Sepsis is an important cause of childhood morbidity and mortali.

Although automated sepsis alerts offer many advantages over manual alerts, clinicians can suffer from "alarm fatigue" when automated sepsis alerts are introduc.

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to assess whether the influx of COVID-19 patients in the pediatric emergency department changed the frequency of sepsis alerts or how well these alerts performed in identifying patients with hypotensive septic sho.

Methods: We performed a retrospective cohort study of 59,335 ED patients before the outbreak and 51,990 ED patients during the outbreak who had automated sepsis alerts based on systemic inflammatory response syndrome criter.

RESULTS: The proportion of emergency department visits that triggered sepsis alerts was 0% (n=4, 180) before the outbreak and 1% (n=3, 199) during this peri.

Table 1A Comparison of the performance of sepsis screening algorithms before and during the COVID-19 outbreak 1A Comparison of the performance of sepsis screening algorithms before and during the COVID-19 outbreak

Table 1B compares the performance of sepsis screening algorithms for COVID-19 positive and negative patients during the COVID-19 pandemic

Table 1B compares the performance of sepsis screening algorithms for COVID-19 positive and negative patients during the COVID-19 pandemic

Table 2 Simulation of sepsis screening algorithm performance under various incidences of COVID-19 positive patients

Table 2 Simulation of sepsis screening algorithm performance under various incidences of COVID-19 positive patients

Figure 1 Interrupted time series analysis of the proportion of patients with positive sepsis screening in the emergency department

Figure 1 Interrupted time series analysis of the proportion of patients with positive sepsis screening in the emergency department

Conclusions: The sepsis alerting algorithm evaluated in this study did not result in excessive notification and maintained adequate performance during the COVID-19 outbreak in the pediatric emergency departme.

Conclusions: The sepsis alerting algorithm evaluated in this study did not result in excessive notification and maintained adequate performance during the COVID-19 outbreak in the pediatric emergency departme.

Original source: Yan AP, Zipursky AR, Capraro A, et .
Pediatric Emergency Department Sepsis Screening Tool Accuracy During the COVID-19 Pandem.
Pediatrics 2022 May 03 Pediatric Emergency Department Sepsis Screening Tool Accuracy During the COVID-19 Pandem.
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