How Can a Doctor Tell if a Patient Has Severe Sepsis?

Severe sepsis is a complex disease. It is important to know that any one of the signs discussed below does not mean a patient has severe sepsis. Patients with severe sepsis have a combination of many of these signs and a doctor will look at all of the signs before making a severe sepsis diagnosis.

Most people with severe sepsis show certain outward signs of infection:

• Fever or abnormally low body temperature, especially in the young and old
• Breathing that is faster or more shallow than normal
• Heart rate that is faster than normal
• Overall weakness

Other outward signs of severe sepsis are based on the type of infection and organ(s) involved:

• Lungs – shallow breathing, shortness of breath, coughing up pus-like mucus (“phlegm”)
• Urinary tract – painful urination, cloudy urine, back pain
• Brain/spinal cord – confusion, severe headache, stiff neck, sensitivity of eyes to light
• Abdomen or bowel – pain in the abdomen (belly)
• Skin – redness and sometimes pus forming around a wound or opening in the skin

Doctors can also use lab tests to help decide if a patient has severe sepsis:

• Blood count – either very high or low values of white blood cells may mean that a patient has an infection
• Cultures of blood or other tissue – the blood, urine, and other body fluids may be checked for the presence of “germs”
• Other blood tests – lab values to check oxygen levels, kidney and liver function
• Chest x-ray – to detect problems in the lungs such as pneumonia

How can the doctor tell if a patient has severe sepsis?
What are the goals of severe sepsis therapy?
How is severe sepsis treated?
Talking with the treatment team
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