Sepsis Surveillance Using Adult Sepsis Events Simplified eSOFA Criteria Versus Sepsis-3 Sequential Organ Failure Assessment Criteria.

OBJECTIVES: Sepsis-3 defines organ dysfunction as an increase in the Sequential Organ Failure Assessment score by greater than or equal to 2 points. However, some Sequential Organ Failure Assessment score components are not routinely recorded in all hospitals' electronic health record systems, limiting its utility for wide-scale sepsis surveillance. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently released the Adult Sepsis Event surveillance definition that includes simplified organ dysfunction criteria optimized for electronic health records (eSOFA). We compared eSOFA versus Sequential Organ Failure Assessment with regard to sepsis prevalence, overlap, and outcomes. DESIGN: Retrospective cohort study. SETTING: One hundred eleven U.S. hospitals in the Cerner HealthFacts dataset. PATIENTS: Adults hospitalized in 2013-2015. INTERVENTIONS: None. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: We identified clinical indicators of presumed infection (blood cultures and antibiotics) concurrent with either: 1) an increase in Sequential Organ Failure Assessment score by 2 or more points (Sepsis-3) or 2) 1 or more eSOFA criteria: vasopressor initiation, mechanical ventilation initiation, lactate greater than or equal to 2.0 mmol/L, doubling in creatinine, doubling in bilirubin to greater than or equal to 2.0 mg/dL, or greater than or equal to 50% decrease in platelet count to less than 100 cells/µL (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Adult Sepsis Event). We compared area under the receiver operating characteristic curves for discriminating in-hospital mortality, adjusting for baseline characteristics. Of 942,360 patients in the cohort, 57,242 (6.1%) had sepsis by Sequential Organ Failure Assessment versus 41,618 (4.4%) by eSOFA. Agreement between sepsis by Sequential Organ Failure Assessment and eSOFA was good (Cronbach's alpha 0.81). Baseline characteristics and infectious diagnoses were similar, but mortality was higher with eSOFA (17.1%) versus Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (14.4%; p < 0.001) as was discrimination for mortality (area under the receiver operating characteristic curve, 0.774 vs 0.759; p < 0.001). Comparisons were consistent across subgroups of age, infectious diagnoses, and comorbidities. CONCLUSIONS: The Adult Sepsis Event's eSOFA organ dysfunction criteria identify a smaller, more severely ill sepsis cohort compared with the Sequential Organ Failure Assessment score, but with good overlap and similar clinical characteristics. Adult Sepsis Events may facilitate wide-scale automated sepsis surveillance that tracks closely with the more complex Sepsis-3 criteria.

Variation in Identifying Sepsis and Organ Dysfunction Using Administrative Versus Electronic Clinical Data and Impact on Hospital Outcome Comparisons.

OBJECTIVES: Administrative claims data are commonly used for sepsis surveillance, research, and quality improvement. However, variations in diagnosis, documentation, and coding practices for sepsis and organ dysfunction may confound efforts to estimate sepsis rates, compare outcomes, and perform risk adjustment. We evaluated hospital variation in the sensitivity of claims data relative to clinical data from electronic health records and its impact on outcome comparisons. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PATIENTS: Retrospective cohort study of 4.3 million adult encounters at 193 U.S. hospitals in 2013-2014. INTERVENTIONS: None. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: Sepsis was defined using electronic health record-derived clinical indicators of presumed infection (blood culture draws and antibiotic administrations) and concurrent organ dysfunction (vasopressors, mechanical ventilation, doubling in creatinine, doubling in bilirubin to ≥ 2.0 mg/dL, decrease in platelets to < 100 cells/µL, or lactate ≥ 2.0 mmol/L). We compared claims for sepsis prevalence and mortality rates between both methods. All estimates were reliability adjusted to account for random variation using hierarchical logistic regression modeling. The sensitivity of hospitals' claims data was low and variable: median 30% (range, 5-54%) for sepsis, 66% (range, 26-84%) for acute kidney injury, 39% (range, 16-60%) for thrombocytopenia, 36% (range, 29-44%) for hepatic injury, and 66% (range, 29-84%) for shock. Correlation between claims and clinical data was moderate for sepsis prevalence (Pearson coefficient, 0.64) and mortality (0.61). Among hospitals in the lowest sepsis mortality quartile by claims, 46% shifted to higher mortality quartiles using clinical data. Using implicit sepsis criteria based on infection and organ dysfunction codes also yielded major differences versus clinical data. CONCLUSIONS: Variation in the accuracy of claims data for identifying sepsis and organ dysfunction limits their use for comparing hospitals' sepsis rates and outcomes. Using objective clinical data may facilitate more meaningful hospital comparisons.

Disproportionality analysis for signal detection of implantable cardioverter-defibrillator-related adverse events in the Food and Drug Administration Medical Device Reporting System.

BACKGROUND: The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) became aware of lead fracture and inappropriate shock events related to Sprint Fidelis leads in January 2007. The manufacturer announced a voluntary market withdrawal in October 2007. AIM: Our aim was to retrospectively evaluate this safety signal using disproportionality analysis to estimate whether disproportionality analysis could have detected this particular safety signal earlier than actually occurred. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The Manufacturer and User Facility Device Experience (MAUDE) database contains reports on device-related adverse events, of which, FDA receives several hundred thousand every year. For each manufacturer, a list of the top lead brand names was ranked by frequency of reports. We used the Multi-item Gamma Poisson Shrinker (MGPS) method for analysis. We isolated 11 top-reported implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) lead brand names. Using MGPS methodology, we calculated the one-sided 95% lower confidence bound EB05 on the empirical Bayes geometric mean of the reporting ratio. RESULTS: We performed individual MGPS analysis for each of the top reported adverse events in 2006 for ICD leads. Fidelis had the highest EB05 scores for lead fractures and inappropriate shock. DISCUSSION: Through disproportionality analysis of the MAUDE database, we were able to identify known safety signals associated with the Medtronic Sprint Fidelis lead. CONCLUSION: If utilized at the time, this disproportionality analysis would have identified signals earlier for lead fractures, oversensing, high impedance, and inappropriate shock.