• Yunjoo Im, Danbee Kang, Ryoung-Eun Ko, Yeon Joo Lee, Sung Yoon Lim, Sunghoon Park, Soo Jin Na, Chi Ryang Chung, Mi Hyeon Park, Dong Kyu Oh, Chae-Man Lim, Gee Young Suh, and Korean Sepsis Alliance (KSA) investigators.
• Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Department of Medicine, Samsung Medical Center, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
• Crit Care. 2022 Jan 13; 26 (1): 19.

BackgroundTimely administration of antibiotics is one of the most important interventions in reducing mortality in sepsis. However, administering antibiotics within a strict time threshold in all patients suspected with sepsis will require huge amount of effort and resources and may increase the risk of unintentional exposure to broad-spectrum antibiotics in patients without infection with its consequences. Thus, controversy still exists on whether clinicians should target different time-to-antibiotics thresholds for patients with sepsis versus septic shock.MethodsThis study analyzed prospectively collected data from an ongoing multicenter cohort of patients with sepsis identified in the emergency department. Adjusted odds ratios (ORs) were compared for in-hospital mortality of patients who had received antibiotics within 1 h to that of those who did not. Spline regression models were used to assess the association of time-to-antibiotics as continuous variables and increasing risk of in-hospital mortality. The differences in the association between time-to-antibiotics and in-hospital mortality were assessed according to the presence of septic shock.ResultsOverall, 3035 patients were included in the analysis. Among them, 601 (19.8%) presented with septic shock, and 774 (25.5%) died. The adjusted OR for in-hospital mortality of patients whose time-to-antibiotics was within 1 h was 0.78 (95% confidence interval [CI] 0.61-0.99; p = 0.046). The adjusted OR for in-hospital mortality was 0.66 (95% CI 0.44-0.99; p = 0.049) and statistically significant in patients with septic shock, whereas it was 0.85 (95% CI 0.64-1.15; p = 0.300) in patients with sepsis but without shock. Among patients who received antibiotics within 3 h, those with septic shock showed 35% (p = 0.042) increased risk of mortality for every 1-h delay in antibiotics, but no such trend was observed in patients without shock.ConclusionTimely administration of antibiotics improved outcomes in patients with septic shock; however, the association between early antibiotic administration and outcome was not as clear in patients with sepsis without shock.© 2022. The Author(s).

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