ReviewJournal of thoracic disease2020
Sepsis trends: increasing incidence and decreasing mortality, or changing denominator?
Review in Journal of thoracic disease, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 95 papers, 4 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
95 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 167 citations in OpenAlex.
- Sepsis mortality prediction using machine learning and deep learning - a systematic review.BMC medical informatics and decision making · 2025Pooled it
- Efficacy and Safety of Umbilical Cord-Derived Mesenchymal Stromal Cell Therapy in Preclinical Models of Sepsis: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.Stem cells translational medicine · 2024Pooled it
- Role of cell-free DNA levels in the diagnosis and prognosis of sepsis and bacteremia: A systematic review and meta-analysis.PloS one · 2024Pooled it
- Sepsis prediction, early detection, and identification using clinical text for machine learning: a systematic review.Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA · 2022Pooled it
- Trends in all-cause pneumonia and influenza hospitalization incidence by coding position - a study of US healthcare claims, 2014-2023.Pneumonia (Nathan Qld.) · 2026Article
- Deciphering sepsis molecular subtypes using large-scale data to identify subtype-specific drug repurposing.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Early Identification of a Cytokine-Low Immune Phenotype in Suspected Sepsis Using a Point-of-Care Whole-Blood TNF-α Release Assay.Medical sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Impact of United Kingdom guidelines for stratification of risk in adult hospital inpatients identified with sepsis - an observational cohort study.BMC infectious diseases · 2026Observational
- Early prediction of sepsis in the ICU: a comparative analysis of multiple machine-learning algorithms using the MIMIC-III database.BMC medical informatics and decision making · 2026Article
- A Simple Admission-Based Score for Early Mortality Risk Stratification in Non-Shock Sepsis: A Pilot Study.Diagnostics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Performance of a Sepsis Prediction Model Across Different Sepsis Definitions.JAMA network open · 2026Article
- Possible contribution of the STAT3 signaling pathway to disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC) in mice with cecal ligation and puncture-induced sepsis.Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's archives of pharmacology · 2026Article
- Trends and disparities in disseminated intravascular coagulation-related mortality among adults aged 25 and above in the U.S., 1999-2020: CDC WONDER insights.Thrombosis journal · 2026Article
- Impaired peripheral mononuclear cell metabolism in patients at risk of developing sepsis: A cohort study.Journal of critical care medicine (Universitatea de Medicina si Farmacie din Targu-Mures) · 2026Article
- Decoy Nanoparticles and Protein Corona Modulation: A Novel Frontier in Sepsis Treatment.International journal of nanomedicine · 2026Review
- Point-of-care LPS-induced TNF-α release testing for early sepsis risk stratification in the emergency department.Frontiers in immunology · 2026Observational
- Incidence and risk factors of post-intensive care syndrome (PICS) in sepsis survivors: a prospective, observational study.BMC anesthesiology · 2025Observational
- Rising rates of sepsis in England: an ecological study.Infection · 2025Article
- Predictive value of PD-1Scientific reports · 2025Article
- A double-edged sword: a narrative review on steroids in sepsis and septic shock.Internal and emergency medicine · 2025Review
35 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Numerous studies suggest that the incidence of sepsis has been steadily increasing over the past several decades while mortality rates are falling. However, reliably assessing trends in sepsis epidemiology is challenging due to changing diagnosis and coding practices over time. Ongoing efforts by clinicians, administrators, policy makers, and patient advocates to increase sepsis awareness, screening, and recognition are leading to more patients being labeled with sepsis. Subjective clinical definitions and heterogeneous presentations also allow for wide discretion in diagnosing sepsis rather than specific infections alone or non-specific syndromes. These factors create a potential ascertainment bias whereby the inclusion of less severely ill patients in sepsis case counts over time leads to a perceived increase in sepsis incidence and decrease in sepsis mortality rates. Analyses that rely on administrative data alone are further confounded by changing coding practices in response to new policies, financial incentives, and efforts to improve documentation. An alternate strategy for measuring sepsis incidence, outcomes, and trends is to use objective and consistent clinical criteria rather than administrative codes or registries to identify sepsis. This is feasible using data routinely found in electronic health record systems, such as blood culture draws and sustained courses of antibiotics to identify infection and laboratory values, vasopressors, and mechanical ventilation to measure acute organ dysfunction. Recent surveillance studies using this approach suggest that sepsis incidence and mortality rates have been essentially stable over the past decade. In this review, we summarize the major epidemiologic studies of sepsis trends, potential biases in these analyses, and the recent change in the surveillance paradigm toward using objective clinical data from electronic health records to more accurately characterize sepsis trends.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.