Orlando Sentinel: In light of Kyle Busch’s death, we need to talk about sepsis treatment
The death of NASCAR driver Kyle Busch, a relatively healthy 41-year-old, startled the public in late May when his severe pneumonia progressed into sepsis. While pneumonia is a common condition, Busch’s development of sepsis — when the body goes into organ failure after an infection — is highly unusual, as sepsis tends to affect patients who are either very young, very old or have chronic medical conditions.
Despite being one of the costliest, deadliest conditions patients may experience in the hospital, sepsis is less understood than other health challenges like stroke and heart attacks. But Busch’s death has highlighted how much that needs to change.
At University of Florida Health and the UF Sepsis and Critical Illness Research Center, where I serve as the director, we are using AI-powered research to detect and treat sepsis in ways that go far beyond the clinical trials of the past several decades.
Sepsis is challenging because each patient’s response is unique and requires an individualized treatment strategy. Busch’s sepsis, for example, led to a condition called disseminated intravascular coagulation, which causes the body’s blood-clotting system to become dangerously overactive and contributes to both widespread clotting and severe bleeding.
Unfortunately, surviving acute sepsis — the rapid-onset, systemic reaction to an initial infection, as in Busch’s situation — does not always mean a patient will have optimal long-term outcomes.
Many septic patients enter a state of “chronic critical illness” that can lead to post-ICU syndrome, with an increased risk of developing other conditions or dying within one to two years of hospital discharge. The public is aware of long COVID, and it can be helpful to think of this post-sepsis syndrome as “long sepsis,” except that long sepsis can be secondary to any type of infection. Research at UF has determined that up to one-third of sepsis survivors can enter this state, where they are unable to break the vicious cycle of the disease and fully recover.