If you have been following this blog for a while, you likely know about my involvement with the patient advocacy group, Sepsis Alliance. It's a very worthwhile organization that strives to increase awareness of the deadly disease, sepsis.
The recent death of actor Lesley Nielsen is just one of thousands from sepsis. Although the news reports say that Mr. Nielsen died of "complications from pneumonia," this is what sepsis is: "complications of...."
Sepsis Alliance has just made public a fantastic video to help explain the seriousness of the disease and I encourage you to watch it - and pass it on. As. Dr. O'Brien says in the video - this is a disease that we can affect tomorrow: we can reduce deaths up to 50% starting tomorrow, if only we all knew and understood what sepsis was - allowing us to detect it early enough.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Sepsis: Emergency, a video
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2 comments:
It is really a deadly decease
thanks for the knowledge about sepsis.
Hey, thanks for telling the story and finding me.
As you know, I went into septic shock in an ER in Austin in May 2008. I was very fortunate in that 1) I survived, and 2) did not have the more severe complications others have. My only apparent problems were bad IBS afterwards, and I believe that I may have introduced a fungal infection into my system because of the low immune system and the resulting courses of antibiotics (about 8 over a 2 months period). I only recently discovered the fungal which probably has been in my sinuses for the last 2 1/2 years.
As my own blog will indicate in the Summer of 2008, the hospital didn't use the term "septic shock" to me and I only realized what had happened in Jan. 2009, when the Brazilian model died from septic shock/sepsis after presenting with a urinary tract infection.
If you mention to most doctors the term "sepsis," and ask, "how serious is it?" - the response may be laughter intend to convey "VERY serious."
I hope that as your group galvanizes people around the issue, there might be advances in learning to identify it, and the responses that can be taken.
I have not taken the term "shock" in the same way since I had it.
See my posting in Summer 2008 about my ER visit for details. Again, note - I didn't understand it was shock then. In Texas, doctors don't like the term since they are often sued over missing it.
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