Following the news that sepsis has been found to be a bigger killer than cancer worldwide in a study by Rudd et al;

Kasey Fu, Director of Epidemiology at GlobalData, provides her view:

“The *7MM will see diagnosed incident cases of sepsis grow at an annual growth rate (AGR) of 2.06% per year over the next ten years from 2.5 million cases in 2016 to 3.1 million in 2026. By these estimations, this year will see around 600,000 cases of septic shock and close to three million cases of intensive care unit (ICU) hospitalized sepsis.

“The study by Rudd et al, published in Lancet, was an impressive and enormous undertaking. Looking at the study’s robust and comprehensive methodology, it is not surprising that sepsis incidence was found to be twice as what was known previously. Compared to most other sepsis studies that only looked at hospital incidence and in-hospital deaths, this brings much needed attention to cases and deaths occurring outside the traditional treatment environments.

“While the number of incident cases and mortality from sepsis is significantly higher than previously thought, the main causes of incidence and mortality have not changed since the 1990s. The high disease burden and mortality rate is not due to anything new, so it really shows that public health efforts have not been successful in preventing sepsis and sepsis-related deaths.”

* 7MM = US, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, UK, and Japan