Increasing awareness of sepsis: World Sepsis Day

e fi rst ever World Sepsis Day (WSD), a great opportunity to increase awareness about sepsis, is going to be held on Sept. 13. We already have World Diabetes Day, Breast Cancer Awareness Day, World Asthma Day, World AIDS day, even a Rare Disease Day, so why not a day dedicated especially to sepsis? After all, sepsis is estimated to aff ect at least 18 million individuals worldwide, and with mortality rates of 25% to 30% [1,2], severe sepsis kills more individuals annually than prostate cancer, breast cancer, and HIV/AIDS combined, and the numbers of cases are increasing every year. Yet it is a condition that is poorly understood by those outside of medicine. Almost 90% of the public have never even heard of sepsis, and of those who have, less than 60% realize it is a leading cause of death [3]. But if the condition is diagnosed early and managed appropriately, lives can be saved. So why is so little known about sepsis? Why is public awareness of other diseases so much greater than the aware ness of sepsis. One key factor is that people suff er-ing from asthma or AIDS or even cancer live with their disease from day to day, often long-term, and have the opportunity and time to speak out and to lobby politicians and others involved in health-care management for better facilities, treatments, research funding, and so on. Individuals with sepsis, in contrast, are critically ill in the intensive care unit (ICU) and unable to speak for themselves. Th e 50% to 60% of patients who survive could, of course, speak up when they have recovered, but these patients are often so happy to have survived that they want to move on and not look back. Alternatively, they may be unable to remember much of what happened during their ICU stay or they may suff er from ICU-related post-traumatic stress disorder [4] or depression [5], making it diffi cult for them to speak out. Patients with sepsis may also focus more on the primary disease process that caused their sepsis (for example, an underlying cancer, a pneumonia, or an episode of decompensated heart failure). Th ey may even blame the hospital because their sepsis was hospital-acquired and caused by a multiresistant microorganism. Patients (and their families) often do not realize that it is the fact that they were already ill with an impaired immune status …