I just read about a lawsuit in Minn where a man and wife both presented to the emergency room with flu like symptoms. Days later, the man came back, complaining of pain, decreased appetite, etc. Blood work was done and revealed the man had sepsis. Sepsis is often referred to as a blood stream infection. It is caused by the presence of bacteria (bacteremia) or other infectious organisms or their toxins in the blood (septicemia) or in other tissue of the body.
So how or why would someone confuse the FLU and sepsis? Sepsis may be associated with clinical symptoms of systemic (bodywide) illness, such as fever, chills, malaise (generally feeling "rotten"), low blood pressure, and mental status changes.
Some of these are similar to the Flu, but the two are not similar. Labs should tell you what is the Flu, and what is more serious. Sadly, it seems the Minn. doctor ordered the right tests, but didn't respond when nurses asked for further direction and care.
Monday, December 15, 2008
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What happens is this. When you get the flu you have fever, body aches, myalgias. You then have loss of the cillia that move mucus from your lungs and as a result get a severe cough. This then can lead to pneumonia and sepsis. This is why the flu is such a severe problem. A significant number of patients with the flu will develope sepsis. This is why someone can come in with the flu one day and have sepsis in 2 days. They are related and causal.
To say that it is one or the other is naive. One leads to another and this is well documented. This is why the flu still maintains an high mortality rate.
Oh, the flu test that is diagnostic takes 2 to 4 days to get the results. The rapid flu test is a test based on antibodies. If you have the flu really bad, it is because you dont have the antibiodies to fight it, much less enough to turn the test positive. This is about the time the patient goes in to respiratory shock and is intubated from the secondary sepsis.
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