Why Does Sepsis Kill So Many Children?

Emeritus Professor Alan Glasper from the University of Southampton discusses the difficulty in spotting signs of sepsis in sick children. Across the world, sepsis in childhood is the potential severe and life-threatening aftermath following infection. It is notoriously difficult to detect in the initial stages and if not spotted by the vigilant health-care professional can be deadly. A child can develop sepsis as the result of any type of infection. In neonates for example, untreated infections during pregnancy can be transmitted from the mother to a new-born leading to neonatal sepsis. This more so than in older babies, can present with nonspecific signs that quickly progress to full blown sepsis with accompanying elevated mortality and morbidity rates. Although difficult to detect especially during the early stages of the condition, it can be prevented and treated if identified in a timely manner by a health-care professional. Even if sepsis is established in the infected infant, the disease may still be contained successfully if treatment is commenced promptly. Although relatively rare during childhood, sepsis still claims the lives of 2 or 3 children each day in the UK. It is because the presenting signs and symptoms associated with childhood sepsis are so very nonspecific that it makes the identification of sepsis in young children challenging to identify for parents, guardians, and doctors and nurses (Karas, 2020). Sepsis can be so sudden in onset that it can result in a child being virtually moribund within hours. Across the world, thousands of children are affected by the disease with more than 75,000 children developing sepsis each year in the USA. The Sepsis Alliance, which is a sepsis awareness charity in the USA, strives to increase awareness of sepsis among members of the public and health-care professionals. This charity claims that 200 children per day in the USA develop sepsis with the number of child victims increasing year on year leading to the death of 7000 children annually in the country. Furthermore, up to a third of COMPREHENSIVE CHILD AND ADOLESCENT NURSING 2023, VOL. 46, NO. 2, 79–82 https://doi.org/10.1080/24694193.2023.2206361