Rapid review finds no mortality or length-of-stay benefits from sepsis alert systems in adults, indicating significant implementation barriers hinder clinical efficacy.
Key Points
To evaluate the effectiveness of recent sepsis prediction and recognition systems on clinical processes, patient outcomes, implementation measures, and healthcare costs.
Conducted a rapid review searching PubMed and Cochrane Library databases for systematic reviews and primary studies published between January 2018 and August 2023.
Evaluated multicomponent sepsis prediction and recognition interventions across pre-hospital, emergency department, intensive care unit, and inpatient ward settings.
Identified seven systematic reviews and eight original studies covering adult, pediatric, and neonatal populations.
Interventions did not improve hospital length of stay or mortality outcomes in adults, and evidence regarding mortality or length of stay in neonates was insufficient.
Interventions improved clinical process measures in neonatal intensive care units (low strength of evidence) but failed to do so in adult cohorts, largely due to low predictive value and alert overload.