It’s important for labs to stay on top of current guidelines and emerging therapies for the diagnosis and treatment of sepsis. An afternoon symposium at the AACC Annual Meeting & Clinical Lab Expo will prep attendees on the latest practice guidelines, strategies and technologies, and emerging biomarkers of this disease.
“Innovative Approaches to the Diagnosis and Treatment of Sepsis – A Collaborative Story” (34213), takes place July 29.
The Surviving Sepsis Campaign (SSC) currently recommends managing the septic patient through sepsis resuscitation and monitoring bundles. “These involve assessing clinical targets like fluid and oxygen status, as well as laboratory parameters like lactate and using these to guide therapy decisions,” session moderator Alison Woodworth, PhD, assistant professor with the Department of Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, told CLN Stat.
Hospitals that have successfully implemented sepsis care bundles have seen significant reductions in sepsis-related mortality. The challenge, however, is getting needed resources to implement such systems. “Further, it is extremely difficult for clinicians to identify patients with sepsis, especially early in the pathobiological process,” Woodworth explained.
Joining Woodworth on the panel for this discussion will be Arthur Wheeler, MD, associate professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Jessica Colon-Franco, PhD, associate professor of pathology at the Medical College of Wisconsin, and Todd Rice, MD, MSc, assistant professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
The session’s speakers will address such challenges to the current system, then share a collaborative approach a Vanderbilt clinical team developed to tackle these issues.
The team specifically devised a computerized system to identify and directly treat septic patients in the intensive care unit. “Further, we retrieved residual plasma specimens from the clinical laboratory to compile a systemic inflammatory response syndrome biorepository. We then utilized this biorepository to study novel diagnostic models to predict sepsis early in its pathobiologic process,” Woodworth said.
Session attendees won’t just learn about novel approaches to diagnosis and management of septic patients—they’ll gain a new appreciation of the value of multidisciplinary collaboration in biomarker discovery, she said.
Register online to attend this session and learn more about new innovations in sepsis diagnosis, management and treatment.