IMPORTANCE The death of a pediatric patient with sepsis motivated New York to mandate statewide sepsis treatment in 2013. The mandate included a 1-hour bundle of blood cultures, broad-spectrum antibiotics, and a 20-mL/kg intravenous fluid bolus. Whether completing the bundle elements within 1 hour improves outcomes is unclear. OBJECTIVE To determine the risk-adjusted association between completing the 1-hour pediatric sepsis bundle and individual bundle elements with in-hospital mortality. DESIGN, SETTINGS, AND PARTICIPANTS Statewide cohort study conducted from April 1, 2014, to December 31, 2016, in emergency departments, inpatient units, and intensive care units across New York State. A total of 1179 patients aged 18 years and younger with sepsis and septic shock reported to the New York State Department of Health who had a sepsis protocol initiated were included. EXPOSURES Completion of a 1-hour sepsis bundle within 1 hour compared with not completing the 1-hour sepsis bundle within 1 hour. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES Risk-adjusted in-hospital mortality. RESULTS Of 1179 patients with sepsis reported at 54 hospitals (mean [SD] age, 7.2 [6.2] years; male, 54.2%; previously healthy, 44.5%; diagnosed as having shock, 68.8%), 139 (11.8%) died. The entire sepsis bundle was completed in 1 hour in 294 patients (24.9%). Antibiotics were administered to 798 patients (67.7%), blood cultures were obtained in 740 patients (62.8%), and the fluid bolus was completed in 548 patients (46.5%) within 1 hour. Completion of the entire bundle within 1 hour was associated with lower risk-adjusted odds of in-hospital mortality (odds ratio [OR], 0.59 [95% CI, 0.38 to 0.93], P = .02; predicted risk difference [RD], 4.0% [95% CI, 0.9% to 7.0%]). However, completion of each individual bundle element within 1 hour was not significantly associated with lower risk-adjusted mortality (blood culture: OR, 0.73 [95% CI, 0.51 to 1.06], P = .10; RD, 2.6% [95% CI, −0.5% to 5.7%]; antibiotics: OR, 0.78 [95% CI, 0.55 to 1.12], P = .18; RD, 2.1% [95% CI, −1.1% to 5.2%], and fluid bolus: OR, 0.88 [95% CI, 0.56 to 1.37], P = .56; RD, 1.1% [95% CI, −2.6% to 4.8%]). CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE In New York State following a mandate for sepsis care, completion of a sepsis bundle within 1 hour compared with not completing the 1-hour sepsis bundle within 1 hour was associated with lower risk-adjusted in-hospital mortality among patients with pediatric sepsis and septic shock.

Although the impact of comorbidity on outcomes in ESRD has been evaluated extensively, its contribution after kidney transplantation has not been well studied. It is believed that comorbidity assessment is critical to the informed interpretation of kidney transplant outcomes. In this study, the Charlson Comorbidity Index was used to assess the comorbid conditions of 715 patients who underwent kidney transplantation at the Starzl Transplant Institute between January 1998 and January 2003. The impact of pretransplantation comorbidity on the development of acute cellular rejection after transplantation and on patient and graft survival was examined. The most common comorbid conditions among our patient population were diabetes (n ‫؍‬ 217, 30.3%) and heart failure (n ‫؍‬ 85, 11.9%). It was found the number of patients with high comorbidity at the Starzl Transplant Institute has increased significantly over time (P ‫؍‬ 0.04). In multivariate adjusted models, high comorbidity was associated with an increased risk for patient death, both in the perioperative period (hazard ratio 3.20, 95% confidence interval 1.32 to 7.78; P ‫؍‬ 0.01) and >3 mo after transplantation (hazard ratio 2.63; 95% confidence interval 1.62 to 4.28; P < 0.001). The Charlson Comorbidity Index is a practical tool for the evaluation of comorbidity in the transplant population, which has an increasing burden of comorbid disease. Increased comorbidity affects both perioperative and long-term patient outcomes and carries significant implications not only for the development of individual patient therapeutic strategies but also for the interpretation of patient trials and the development of policies that govern distribution of donor organs.

Although sleep problems are thought to be prevalent among patients who undergo dialysis, there is only limited information on the determinants of sleep quality and the change in sleep quality during the first year of dialysis treatment. This report uses data from a national cohort study of incident hemodialysis and peritoneal dialysis patients to identify the correlates of sleep quality and to determine the extent to which sleep quality is related to patients' health-related quality of life and survival. This report includes 909 incident dialysis patients who responded to questions about sleep quality. Three quarters of incident dialysis patients reported impaired sleep, and 14% had a decline in sleep quality in the first year of treatment. Poor sleep quality was significantly related to black race, higher serum phosphate, current smoking, benzodiazepine prescription, and complaints of severe restless legs. Poor baseline sleep quality was associated with lower SF-36 physical and mental component summary scores, vitality scores, and bodily pain scores (all P < 0.001). Younger age, current smoking, and benzodiazepine prescription were associated with decreases in sleep quality at 1 yr. There was no association between baseline sleep quality and survival; however, a decline in sleep quality during the first year on dialysis was associated with shorter survival (hazard ratio 1.44; 95% confidence interval 1.13 to 1.83; P ‫؍‬ 0.003). Future work should examine the link between sleep quality and daytime functioning in the kidney failure population and the extent to which improving sleep quality will improve dialysis patient outcomes.

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Sepsis is defined as a dysregulated host response to infection that leads to life-threatening acute organ dysfunction. It afflicts approximately 50 million people worldwide annually and is often deadly, even when evidence-based guidelines are applied promptly. Many randomized trials tested therapies for sepsis over the past 2 decades, but most have not proven beneficial. This may be because sepsis is a heterogeneous syndrome, characterized by a vast set of clinical and biologic features. Combinations of these features, however, may identify previously unrecognized groups, or “subclasses” with different risks of outcome and response to a given treatment. As efforts to identify sepsis subclasses become more common, many unanswered questions and challenges arise. These include: 1) the semantic underpinning of sepsis subclasses, 2) the conceptual goal of subclasses, 3) considerations about study design, data sources, and statistical methods, 4) the role of emerging data types, and 5) how to determine whether subclasses represent “truth.” We discuss these challenges and present a framework for the broader study of sepsis subclasses. This framework is intended to aid in the understanding and interpretation of sepsis subclasses, provide a mechanism for explaining subclasses generated by different methodologic approaches, and guide clinicians in how to consider subclasses in bedside care.

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