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Angkor Hospital for Children.
A new study published in Nature Medicine suggests that a revised approach to paediatric triage could help prevent thousands of deaths and reduce unnecessary referrals in resource-constrained and conflict-affected settings.
The Spot Sepsis study was led by researchers from the Mahidol Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit (MORU), a research unit within the University of Oxford’s Nuffield Department of Medicine, and Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). The researchers found that new prognostic tools outperformed current international standards for identifying which febrile children require urgent hospital referral.
In many remote communities, infectious diseases remain the leading cause of death for children under five, often because health workers lack the tools to recognise impending sepsis before it is too late. The study found that the current World Health Organization (WHO) danger signs would have missed nearly half (44.5%) of the children who eventually progressed to death or required organ support.
By contrast, the research team's new models, which combine simple and accessible clinical signs with pulse oximetry or a blood test called sTREM1, would have identified approximately 89% of these high-risk children. Overall recommended referral rates using the new tools were also projected to fall from 17% to less than 5%.
Read the full story on the Nuffield Department of Medicine website.