Sepsis family I don't understand you

[Ames coolvibeman]

Greetings all,

I just had a lecture regarding sepsis and its associates (so to speak) and it was over quite quickly and it left me, I must say rather confused! So I was doing my own research/study and this is how I understand it.

Septicaemia: Presence of pathogens in the blood stream-hence blood poisoning or could be termed as bacteraemia?

In the lecture they explained it as the process in which the body moves from a local to systemic infection? But I don't see how that fits?

Sepsis: is the body's systemic inflammatory response to severe infection.

Severe sepsis: sepsis that causes organs to malfunction and blood flow to become inadequate to parts of the body.

Septic shock: presence of sepsis with severe hypotension despite having fluid resuscitation. Also inadequate tissue perfusion leading to tissue hypoxia and likely death?

BUT what causes the hypotension? Must be the inadequate flow of blood? But where does the fluid go?

Thanks in advance.

Amy

[Triddin]

So sepsis is your body's local inflammatory response gone haywire. So, for example, you cut yourself. You're body releases leukocytes you get Vasodilation and increased membrane permeability as part of the the body's inflammation response so who's and other important factors can get to the site.

So systemic inflammatory response (SIRS) is when this response goes to the entire body. They aren't sure why it effects some and not others, (I think it's related to an immune response). So now you have full body hypotension and increased membrane permeability. Where does the fluid go? Often it third spaces leaving your patient intravascularly dry. Sirs is characterized by hypotension, increased hr, increased rr, elevated temp or elevated wbc (2 or more required)

This is labeled sepsis when a known infection is hr thrown into the mix.

Hopefully that helps. Review your inflammatory response and imagine it on the whole scale of the body and you'll have a better idea about how sepsis can progress to mods/ why survival can be low/ why these patients can go into dic etc

[NICU Guy, BSN, RN]

Septicaemia can start off as pneumonia. When the bacteria in the lungs gets into the bloodstream, the infection can become systemic and cause sepsis (the body's systemic inflammatory response to severe infection).

Like Triddin said, you get Vasodilation and increased membrane permeability as part of the the body's inflammatory response. Imagine you have a fire in one room of a building. The sprinkler system goes off in the room to put out the fire causing a slight decrease in the water pressure (localized infection). If the fire spreads to a large portion of the building, the water pressure will significantly drop (hypotension) causing an insufficient amount of water to get to every room to fight the fire causing to spread further ( infection spreads). With SIRS you get an entire body response. In the fire example, the sprinklers go off in every room of the building, including the rooms without a fire causing a severe drop in water pressure (systemic hypotension and organ failure).