• Matthew M Churpek, Jay Dumanian, Nicole Dussault, Sivasubramanium V Bhavani, Kyle A Carey, Emily R Gilbert, Erum Arain, Chen Ye, Christopher J Winslow, Nirav S Shah, Majid Afshar, and Dana P Edelson.
• Department of Medicine, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI.
• Crit. Care Med. 2021 Jul 1; 49 (7): e673e682e673-e682.

ObjectivesRecent sepsis studies have defined patients as "infected" using a combination of culture and antibiotic orders rather than billing data. However, the accuracy of these definitions is unclear. We aimed to compare the accuracy of different established criteria for identifying infected patients using detailed chart review.DesignRetrospective observational study.SettingSix hospitals from three health systems in Illinois.PatientsAdult admissions with blood culture or antibiotic orders, or Angus International Classification of Diseases infection codes and death were eligible for study inclusion as potentially infected patients. Nine-hundred to 1,000 of these admissions were randomly selected from each health system for chart review, and a proportional number of patients who did not meet chart review eligibility criteria were also included and deemed not infected.InterventionsNone.Measurements And Main ResultsThe accuracy of published billing code criteria by Angus et al and electronic health record criteria by Rhee et al and Seymour et al (Sepsis-3) was determined using the manual chart review results as the gold standard. A total of 5,215 patients were included, with 2,874 encounters analyzed via chart review and a proportional 2,341 added who did not meet chart review eligibility criteria. In the study cohort, 27.5% of admissions had at least one infection. This was most similar to the percentage of admissions with blood culture orders (26.8%), Angus infection criteria (28.7%), and the Sepsis-3 criteria (30.4%). Sepsis-3 criteria was the most sensitive (81%), followed by Angus (77%) and Rhee (52%), while Rhee (97%) and Angus (90%) were more specific than the Sepsis-3 criteria (89%). Results were similar for patients with organ dysfunction during their admission.ConclusionsPublished criteria have a wide range of accuracy for identifying infected patients, with the Sepsis-3 criteria being the most sensitive and Rhee criteria being the most specific. These findings have important implications for studies investigating the burden of sepsis on a local and national level.Copyright © 2021 by the Society of Critical Care Medicine and Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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