Why The Newly Proposed Sepsis Treatment Needs More Study
The bodywide inflammation known as sepsis kills about 300,000 people in U.S. hospitals each year. Promising treatments have come and gone, warn skeptical doctors, who call for rigorous research.
The astronomer Carl Sagan said that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Last week, a physician made the extraordinary claim that he had an effective treatment for sepsis, sometimes known as blood poisoning.
Sepsis is a bodywide inflammation, usually triggered by infection, and the leading cause of death in hospitals, taking 300,000 lives a year. So, even a 15 percent improvement in survival would save 40,000 lives — the number of Americans who die on the highway each year, or from breast cancer.
, a well-regarded intensive care physician at the East Virginia Medical School in Norfolk, Va., is the doctor with the extraordinary claim. As we , he says he has treated about 150
