News: Surviving Sepsis Campaign publishes new pediatric guidelines

The Surviving Sepsis Campaign published new pediatric guidelines in Pediatric Critical Care Medicine earlier this month. Sepsis assessment and management in children has its own set of challenges, as most children who have symptoms of sepsis do not actually have sepsis. For example, fast heart rate and breathing are likely due to other conditions. Low blood pressure, however, is a sign of septic shock in adults but often occurs later in the illness for children.

While adult sepsis guidelines call for beginning antimicrobial therapy within an hour of diagnosis, the new pediatric guidelines recommend a two-phase process for evaluating children suspected of having septic shock. This two-phase recommendation calls for children with symptoms of septic shock to be started on antimicrobial therapy within an hour of shock diagnosis.

Those without septic shock symptoms, according to the guidelines, should be further evaluated to confirm or exclude a diagnosis of sepsis. If the results are positive, patients should be started on therapy within three hours of initial suspicion of sepsis, or sooner if shock develops during the evaluation.

The Surviving Sepsis Campaign is a joint collaboration between the Society of Critical Care Medicine (SCCM) and the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine. The aim of the campaign is to make sepsis and septic shock well known, recognized, and agreed upon terms by the public and medical community. The campaign has spurred research on sepsis and septic shock, and some of the research along with the pediatric guidelines were presented at the 49^th Critical Care Congress of the SCCM held February 16-19, 2020.

Editor’s note: Information on the Surviving Sepsis Campaign can be found here. The guidelines for management of septic shock and sepsis-associated organ dysfunction in children published in Pediatric Critical Care Medicine can be found here.