Tens of thousands of Britons die of sepsis every year. For one nurse, the campaign to raise awareness of the killer is very personal, as Peter Barron discovered

WHEN her husband Brian became so confused that he couldn’t even remember what year it was, Aly Robinson knew there was no time to waste.

Indeed, Brian, a former rugby player who had always enjoyed robust health, may well owe his life to his good fortune in marrying an experienced accident and emergency nurse.

Aly, all five feet four inches of her, managed to bundle her husband’s six-foot frame into the car and drive him from their Hartlepool home to hospital, where her suspicions that he had developed sepsis were confirmed.

Sepsis takes hold when an infection gets into the bloodstream. It can lead to organ failure, and early intervention is crucial to saving lives.

Brian had been suffering from an infection following an operation to replace his knee, which had taken a pounding during his rugby days with Hartlepool Rovers, where he was captain and coach.

Aly had gone to work as normal, thinking Brian was on the mend after starting a course of oral antibiotics. She’d called him during her break at 5pm and he seemed fine, but by the time she arrived home two and a half hours later, he clearly wasn’t. He had a temperature of 40 and confusion had taken over to such an extent that, although it all happened in April last year, he thought it was ten years earlier.

Luckily for him, he hadn’t gone into septic shock and, thanks to Aly’s swift response, he was treated at hospital with what is known as “The Sepsis Six”: he was given high-flow oxygen; his blood was tested; lactate obtained; he was put on intravenous fluids; intravenous antibiotics were started; and his urine output monitored.

Brian made a full recovery but, sadly, it doesn’t always end so positively. Around 44,000 people a year die of sepsis in Britain – that’s more than the number who die from prostate cancer, breast cancer, bowel cancer and HIV combined.

And that’s why the National Health Service is striving to place more emphasis on educating the public about the symptoms of sepsis so that carers and family members understand when to take loved ones to hospital.

Her own personal experience with her husband inspired Aly to apply for a new role in the County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust – sepsis education nurse – and she has now been doing that job for a year.

“To me, sepsis is like an umbrella, with all other infections coming underneath it,” says Aly, who is bubbly and friendly yet fiercely determined to make inroads into the statistics surrounding sepsis.

“In its simplest form, you can get sepsis from a bite or a cut and it spreads into the bloodstream. By the time patients go into septic shock, there’s a 50 per cent chance of survival,” she adds.

Old people and very young children are most at risk but anyone can get sepsis and the aim in the trust is to raise awareness of the symptoms. If people have had an infection and they aren’t getting better with oral antibiotics, and their mental state changes such as new confusion, the advice is to go to hospital and not be afraid to ask the question: “Could it be sepsis?”

The trust’s campaign to place sepsis under a stronger spotlight includes two free events – one in the lecture hall at Darlington Memorial Hospital on September 7 and one on October 11 at Prospect House, Aykley Heads, in Durham. Doors open at 6.30pm for a 7pm start and the speakers are Dr Neil Munro, a respiratory consultant and the trust’s lead on sepsis; Dr Richard Hixson, the trust’s deputy medical director; and there will be a video by Ron Daniels, chief executive of the UK Sepsis Trust.

There will also be stalls from other specialisms within the trust, including paediatrics, maternity, accident and emergency, oncology, pharmacy, and the acute intervention team.

“These are really important events in terms of raising public awareness,” says Aly. “We get really sad cases where healthy and fit people have sepsis but they’ve come to the hospital when it’s too late and they could have been saved with earlier intervention. It’s something we can treat relatively simply if we can capture it quickly enough.”

When sepsis sets in, every hour of delay means an eight per cent increase in the chance of mortality. Identifying it early really does make the difference between life and death.

Aly sits on the National Sepsis Nursing Forum, which ensures best practice is shared around the country. There is also a regional sepsis nurses’ group in the North-East, which meets monthly.

And the campaign is working. In the first quarter of last year, the trust screened 30 per cent of patients who potentially had sepsis. For the first quarter of this year, that figure has increased to 85 per cent.

“There is still room for improvement but we’re getting there and the aim is to save lives. If one person thinks about sepsis and that saves one life, it will have been worth it. It’s just all about catching it early,” says Aly.

Her own husband is living proof.

  • For more information, go to www.sepsistrust.org