Sepsis and increased A's and B's

[aerorunner80, ADN, BSN, MSN, APRN]

I've been searching for the correlation between increased A&B spells and the possibility of sepsis. Can anyone explain this to me?

[Love_2_Learn]

I looked around and found this. An article published in Pediatric Surgery International back in 1987 by Chuang, et al in Quebec (Pediatr Surg Int 1987 2:271-277). The article starts out saying that "Ventilatory depression and apnea are well-known early pulmonary responses to sepsis in infants, yet their underlying mechanisms are poorly understood." They studied some young piglets and injected them with E.coli to cause sepsis. Within 30 minutes they showed significant decreases in pO2 and the pCO2 and apnea occurred within 45 minutes in 9 of the 13 piglets being injected with the E.coli. They went on to say that histology (lung tissue samples under microscope) confirmed interstitial edema can develop in lungs from E.coli sepsis which suggests that high-permeability pulmonary edema is a contributing factor in early ventilation-perfusion maldistribution in spontaneously breathing young piglets.

So, it looks like bacterial sepsis can cause pulmonary edema which makes their ventilation and perfusion unstable which in turn leads to apnea and bradycardia...

This is the best I can find at this time. If someone knows more I'd love to learn more about it too!