sepsis

Young patient, lactate of 5.2, pneumonia… You know what you’re supposed to do–put in the central line and start early goal directed therapy. Problem is, most people can’t see sticking a central line in a patient that does not need pressors and otherwise looks well. Yet these patient have an annoying habit of going on to decompensate and perish. Well now there may be another way. Thanks to an article just published in JAMA, we may have a path to non-invasive treatment of severe sepsis. In this EMCrit Podcast, I interview Dr. Alan E. Jones, author of the article, Lactate clearance vs central venous oxygen saturation as goals of early sepsis therapy: a randomized clinical trial. Then I discuss how this article changes the game when it comes to caring for severe sepsis patients.