Pneumonia...Sepsis... how are the two related?

[CandyGyrl]

Hey everyone, just need a little clarification. I was in pre conferences giving my case presentation and I stated that my female pt was admitted with a dx of pneumonia r/o sepsis. When I attempted to confirm that my patient had pneumonia and not necessarily sepsis my instructor and 1 other student kinda looked at me funny like yeah well you get sepsis from pnumonia or something to that effect. I figured whatever they were trying to tell me I should already know so lemme look it up. OK. so of course my patho paper this week is on pneumonia, my research makes no mention of sepsis so what were they trying to tell me?

Is sepsis a complication of pneumonia... do the two go hand in hand? Does one preceed the other... just help me to make a little sense of it. This is like my 2nd pt this round of clinicals and I'm a little foggy. Ok back to my paper :typing. Go steelers!

[hypocaffeinemia, BSN, RN]

Any severe bacterial infection can potentially migrate into the bloodstream, leading to bacteremia and possibly sepsis. Pneumonia is one such severe infection. That's it-- simpler that you thought it'd be, right?

[RochesterRN-BSN, BSN, RN]

yes any infection anywhere in the body if left untreated can end up in the blood stream. Sometimes even with treatment if the meds chosen are not working on that particular infection. So I'm not sure what your instructor was getting at. The patient could have one or the other or both, really. So maybe I'm missing something! LOL

[CandyGyrl]

Understood. Thanks! Any additional explanations are also appreciated I'll check back later. Yay Steelers! Back to my paper!

[Daytonite, BSN, RN]

When someone is admitted with something like pneumonia r/o sepsis it means that the doctor has made a medical guess that there is a sepsis going on, probably from labwork and some physical exam findings. That is probably what your instructor and the other student were trying to indicate. The patient would be investigated for the presence of the sepsis but be treated for the pneumonia as well. Many times you will see patients admitted for R/O this or that. It is an educated guess by the doctor that they have that medical condition although sometimes it ends up that they don't. When I worked on a stepdown unit we got a lot of patients with chest pain r/o MI. These patients got cardiac workups looking for a heart attack and they might never have another chest pain while they were an inpatient.

[ritarunningfeet]

A r/o diagnosis is usually something that you don't get instant answers for, like sepsis. To find the bacterial infection in the blood, blood cultures are done, and usually they grow for 72 hours before you get an answer, which does leave the question, do they or don't they when they are admitted, hence the r/o, as Daytonite said.