Pulmonary Infection Is an Independent Risk Factor for Long-Term Mortality and Quality of Life for Sepsis Patients

Abstract EN

Background.

Long-term outcomes (mortality and health-related quality of life) of sepsis have risen as important indicators for health care.

Pulmonary infection and abdominal infection are the leading causes of sepsis.

However, few researches about long-term outcomes focused on the origin of sepsis.

Here we aim to study the clinical differences between pulmonary-sepsis and abdominal-sepsis and to investigate whether different infection foci were associated with long-term outcomes.

Methods.

Patients who survived after hospital discharge were followed up by telephone interview.

Quality of life (QoL) was assessed using the EuroQol 5-dimension (EQ5D) questionnaire.

Results.

Four hundred and eighty-three sepsis patients were included, 272 (56.3%) had pulmonary-sepsis, and 180 (37.3%) had abdominal-sepsis.

The overall ICU and one-year mortality rates of the cohort were 17.8% and 36.1%, respectively.

Compared with abdominal-sepsis, pulmonary-sepsis patients had older age, higher APACHE II, higher ICU mortality (31.7% versus 12.6%), and one-year mortality (45.4% versus 24.4%), together with worse QoL.

Age, septic shock, acute renal failure, fungus infection, anion gap, and pulmonary infection were predictors for one-year mortality and pulmonary infection was a risk factor for poor QoL.

Conclusions.

Pulmonary-sepsis showed worse outcome than abdominal-sepsis.

Pulmonary infection is a risk factor for one-year mortality and QoL after sepsis.