Elevated troponin in septic patients in the emergency department: frequency, causes, and prognostic implications.

BACKGROUND: According to the "Third Universal Definition of Myocardial Infarction", cardiac troponin (cTn) is defined to be elevated, if the value is above the 99th percentile of a normal reference population. Especially in emergency medicine, this leads to pathological values more often than before this definition has been founded. Severe sepsis and septic shock frequently cause a rise of cTn, but there is only limited data about its role in septic patients in the emergency department (ED). Therefore, we investigated the frequency, main causes, and prognostic relevance of elevated high-sensitive troponin T (hsTnT) in septic patients in the ED. METHODS: Adults presenting at the ED with sepsis were included in the study. HsTnT was measured soon after admission. Main influencing factors were investigated, and the prognostic value was evaluated. RESULTS: 197 of the 313 analysed patients (62.9 %) showed an elevated hsTnT, with significantly higher rates in patients with severe sepsis and septic shock than in uncomplicated sepsis. APACHE II score, creatinine, and coronary heart disease were found to influence hsTnT independently. Nevertheless, patients with uncomplicated sepsis and without relevant renal insufficiency also showed notable rates of elevated hsTnT: 51.6 % (uncomplicated sepsis) and 34.5 % (no relevant renal failure), respectively. HsTnT showed a prognostic value with higher levels in non-survivors and an AUC of 0.72, p < 0.001. CONCLUSIONS: In the ED, sepsis is a relevant cause of elevated cTn, which underlines the role of sepsis as a differential diagnosis in non-ACS patients with positive cTn. A rise of cTn may be an indicator of poor outcome.

Severity of cardiac impairment in the early stage of community-acquired sepsis determines worse prognosis.

INTRODUCTION: In sepsis, the reduced systemic vascular resistance (SVR) can lead to a compensatory increase in cardiac output (CO). This may mimic a normal cardiac function although there is already a sepsis-induced myocardial depression. On a cohort of patients with septic multi-organ dysfunction syndrome, we have recently developed a method to correlate the actual CO to the afterload (estimated by SVR) and introduced the parameter "afterload-related cardiac performance" (ACP), which indicates if the rise of CO is adequate for the particular SVR. In this present study it was to be investigated, if ACP can reveal septic cardiomyopathy in patients with community-acquired sepsis in the early state soon after admission to the emergency department (ED), and if there is a prognostic relevance of septic cardiomyopathy defined by ACP. Results were compared to cardiac index (CI) and cardiac power index (CPI). METHODS: Adults presenting at the ED with sepsis were included. ACP, CI and CPI were calculated at the time of admission, after 24, and 72 h. They were correlated to severity of disease and the prognostic values were analyzed. RESULTS: A total of 141 patients were included. Only ACP was significantly influenced by severity of sepsis, whereas CI and CPI were not. ACP was the only hemodynamic parameter predicting mortality: nonsurvivors had lower ACP values at the time of admission to the ED (66.9 vs. 88.9 %, p < 0.05) and ACP predicted non-survival with an AUC value of 0.72, p = 0.003. Cardiac impairment defined by an ACP value of 80 % or below determined worse prognosis. CONCLUSIONS: Septic cardiomyopathy occurs already at the early stage of disease and is of prognostic relevance. It might be recognized best, if cardiac function is correlated to afterload.