Sepsis is a major cause of death following a traumatic injury. As a life-threatening medical emergency, it is defined as the body's extreme response to an infection. Without timely treatment, sepsis can rapidly lead to tissue damage, and organ failure The capacity to limit tissue damage through metabolic adaptation and repair processes is associated with an excessive immune response of the host. It is important to make an early prediction of sepsis, based on the quick Sepsis associated Organ Failure Assessment Score (qSOFA), so an accurate treatment can be initiated reducing the morbidity and mortality at the emergency and UCI services.
Sepsis in Trauma: A Deadly Complication - PubMed.
A new study suggests that mitochondria can be released into the bloodstream following physical injury, resulting in a sepsis-like immune response, and leading to the onset of the systemic inflammatory response syndrome
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"The body's vital organs can become dysfunctional when traumatic injury triggers the Systemic Inflammatory Response Syndrome, or SIRS," explains senior author Carl J. Hauser, MD, a trauma and critical care surgery specialist at BIDMC and Visiting Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School. "Trauma kills 5 to 10 million people worldwide per year and among U.S. individuals under age 35, trauma accounts for more deaths than all other illnesses combined.
Inflammatory complications are directly responsible for about one-third of those deaths."
How trauma leads to inflammatory response: Mitochondria may be at root of dangerous complications from injury
ETA I have personal experience with my youngest who nearly died from sepsis after a MINOR injury at school. So minor that nobody thought to call me at the time. Many of the members here were of instrumental emotional support during that frightening time in PICU and the following three months where I had to give him thrice daily infusions.