Thousands of patients are still dying needlessly every year because the NHS fails to take blood poisoning seriously enough, a watchdog has warned.
An urgent patient safety alert was issued to hospitals yesterday, describing the condition as a “major risk”.
Dame Julie Mellor, the parliamentary and health service ombudsman, warned that the NHS was dragging its feet over a condition that kills more people than breast cancer, bowel cancer and prostate cancer combined.
A health minister and senior NHS officials have been summoned by MPs to explain why 37,000 people a year die of sepsis, as the condition is formally known.
About a third of these deaths are thought to be avoidable, yet frontline staff are missing the opportunity to save lives, Dame Julie said.
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Despite a report a year ago urging action, health chiefs had failed to mount a campaign to warn of the dangers and staff still lacked training in how to spot and treat sepsis, the watchdog added.
“Sepsis is a treatable condition but too many people are dying unnecessarily from it because NHS services are failing to spot the warning signs. This is why there are 12,500 avoidable deaths from sepsis a year in the UK.
“There needs to be a combined effort by the health sector to improve the diagnosis and treatment of sepsis, to halt the avoidable deaths from the condition, many of which happen within hours of arrival at hospital,” Dame Julie said.
She added: “More people die of sepsis than of breast cancer, bowel cancer and prostate cancer combined. It’s a critical issue for the health service . . . Some progress has been made, but the pace and scale of change is concerning.”
Sepsis happens when the body overreacts to an infection, damaging tissues and organs. In some cases this causes only mild illness but in others, particularly with the elderly, it can quickly become fatal.
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The condition has a higher death rate than heart attacks and the chances of death increase by 8 per cent every hour that treatment with antibiotics is delayed.
Yet the College of Emergency Medicine found that only a third of patients with severe sepsis were given drugs within an hour.
NHS England’s safety alert demands that hospitals improve the way they deal with sepsis.
A spokesman said: “Our focus is on early detection, getting patients the right treatment at the right time and involving senior staff quickly when patients deteriorate, all of which will improve their chances of making a full recovery. As part of this programme we have issued a patient safety alert, drawing clinicians’ attention to the early detection and treatment of sepsis.”
Dan Poulter, the health minister, and Mike Durkin, head of patient safety at NHS England, will be questioned by MPs on the public administration select committee next week over whether they have done enough to tackle sepsis.
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The Royal College of Physicians issued guidance to frontline staff yesterday on how to spot and rank cases of sepsis by measuring temperature, heart rate, low urine output and markers in the blood as well the onset of confusion in patients.
The condition can be treated with antibiotics, oxygen and fluids — but too often it is not spotted until it is too late.
Dame Julie said: “There needs to be a combined effort by the health sector to improve awareness, diagnosis and treatment of sepsis. We know that most lives are lost during the first few hours of arrival in hospital and so need quicker diagnosis and treatment, or else thousands more lives will be lost unnecessarily through this devastating condition.”