Sepsis deaths in hospitals.

No.

The ban on abortion unless the woman's life was identifiably in danger massively increased the risk of her dying from sepsis. That was important because sepsis can get out of control so readily.

It's still just as dangerous to pregnant women, but at least women suffering from miscarriages should (in theory) be able to have surgical intervention to speed up the miscarriage without waiting until sepsis has begun.

(Why is this coming up as two posts? I just replied, it was two posts, so I deleted one, only to find that both were gone. Then I posted another, which again shows up as two.)

That's the fault of the HSE and the ban on abortion though.

If Savita had been given a termination when she asked for one (which would have been considered "for comfort" reasons at that time, as she didn't then have sepsis, but was miscarrying and was therefore in a lot of pain) she would not have developed sepsis and therefore not have died of it.

The law didn't allow that because she had to wait until she developed signs of sepsis. It was high-wire tightrope acrobatics type medicine, ie not a sensible approach for any sensible health service.

But clearly the introduction of abortion couldn't possibly help people who get sepsis from some other source. And nobody has ever claimed it could. It was only ONE of the problems with sepsis. If the others have been ignored, that's not the fault of the law on abortion.

And there is no way to make sepsis "safe" so that no abortion would ever be required for a woman in Savita's position in the future. In fact the continued dangerosity of sepsis proves that. Sepsis is extremely dangerous, and forcing women to continue an inevitable miscarriage until they began to show signs of sepsis was a madness that no other western health service does.

Sounds distinctly like you're using the thread to rant about abortion rather than because of genuine concern about sepsis.

People get sepsis from cuts, surgeries, other bacterial infections and a hundred other different reasons and illnesses. I don't see what it has to do with abortion at all?

Risk of dieing from sepsis is raised by the overcrowding in hospitals which leads to a delay in diagnosis and treatment and a lack of regular observation meaning the protocols aren't adhered to.

Because healthcare like all sectors contains the lazy, the incompetent, the stupid, etc. The fact that 'lessons were learned' doesn't mean there would never be another death from sepsis ever again.

The fact you're implying that only shows you're here with an agenda and not to engage in good faith.

The faster sepsis is diagnosed and treated, the more a life can be saved

The reason people die of sepsis in our Emergency Departments is less to do with laziness, incompetence and stupidity, and more to do with the completely dysfunction system our healthcare workers are expected to exist in. 70% of human errors are due to weaknesses in the organizations the in which the humans work.

Unfortunately, a scapegoat is usually sought and found among the healthcare staff on duty on the day (see Dr Bawa Garba) and so the actual problems are not sufficiently addressed.

And so excess sepsis deaths will continue to occur, despite the best efforts of the individuals at the coalface.

Two cases in our estate last two week

I suffered from sepsis few years back, at the triage I said I don't feel well at all, I had tooth infection, my jaw was locked, and I was unwell. When I went to A&E window, the triage nurse asked me what it was, etc…. Got my vitals and I was on the bed with IV in my arm in 5 minutes, point being is, there were 50+ people with no life threatening conditions, but that triage nurse saved my life by putting me ON THE TROLLEY IN A&E WITHIN 5 MINUTES, AND I SPENT 48 HOURS THERE ON A TROLLEY BEFORE OPERATION, I lived, don't care about the trolley part…

Thread has merit.

Ignore the abortion segment

Sepsis is a sneaky cnut and if not caught early can have long term devastating effects or fatal. It's often confused for more benign illnesses and then caught too late.

Everyone needs to learn more about sepsis, not just medical staff.

There's a myriad of bacteria that live harmlessly on our skin, in our digestive and upper respiratory tract. These same bacteria can cause life threatening diseases - from pneumonia to meningitis to necrotising fasciitis.

One third of people have MRSA - the 'super bug' living harmlessly in their nose.

Might have been a handover if it was 12 of them.

I don't think we can blame the recent case in Limerick purely on the normal HSE shambles.

The staff treated the girl absolutely awful outside of not responding correctly. Also both the doctor involved and the lead nurse have conveniently left the jurisdiction.

There were 66 other patients triaged to the same level as Aoife that day 'catagory 2' who waited over 10 hours to be seen by a doctor when the target is 15 minutes. The department was severely understaffed both in a nursing and medical capacity.

The clinical nurse manager deemed the department to be 'alarming unsafe' and escalated this opinion to management. Nothing happened.

It's all very well drawing up a sepsis protocol, but if you don't have enough staff and resources to actually see patients, nothing will change. The HSE and hospital management can hide behind the fact that they have a protocol, and the staff on the day will be hung out to dry. C'est la vie.

Oh there's more to come out from there and it's not just sepsis, some terrible medical misadventures. It's our nearest hospital, people have a genuine and well founded fear of the place.

Sepsis is serious though, it's the 1st thing you should suspect, if you end up being wrong that's a good thing.

Indeed. While overcrowding was a factor, I don't think it was the sole factor.

People didn't vote to legalise abortion in a bid to eliminate sepsis. Maybe in your head that's the only way you can fathom so many people supporting it (you said you voted no) but you're wrong.

It's coming up to six years now and there was no doubt about the result. You don't have to have an abortion but an overwhelming majority of people voted to have the choice.

The Savita case brought abortion back into the limelight in the saddest way possible but it wasn't some Trojan horse used to trick people into supporting abortion. People felt strongly abot the topic for a long time before that.

my mother used to refer to us as children of getting Blood Poisoning. It was in relation to getting a cut from a dirty source. Eh a dirty/rusty nail, getting snagged from a dirty piece of iron. Etc . Would she have been referring to getting sepsis without she knowing it?

Yes, Sepsis isn't a new thing just the term sepsis is used more frequently. Before the advent of antibiotics, ultimately sepsis would have been the most common cause of death by far. Usually either from an infected wound or where an infection such as tooth, UTI, Pneumonia etc spread to the bloodstream.

The problem I see in some hospitals is due to the lack of resources and inadequate systems for streaming healthcare in general, the number of people attending A&E results in "some" staff having a bias towards diagnosing the simple easy to deal with option rather than the complex time consuming option when faced with symptoms that could be explained by either. Their goal is to clear patients as quick as possible and so see the easier option more readily. Its human nature and takes training and systems to overcome