Management of severe sepsis in patients admitted to intensive care units in Hong Kong, focus on early blood culture taking and starting of antibiotics

Abstract

Objectives To assess the compliance of HK intensive care units to early taking of blood culture and early administration of board-spectrum antibiotics and to discuss the reasons behind the observed phenomenon. Design Retrospective review of the data from a prospective cohort study. Setting Six intensive care unit across Hong Kong. Participants 102 adult patients with severe sepsis who were admitted to these intensive care units in July 2009. The organizational characteristics of participating centres, the patients’ baseline characteristics, the achievement of targets within the resuscitation and management bundles, and outcome data were recorded. Results Compliance with early taking of the blood cultures is 64.7% and compliance with early administration of antibiotics was 55.9%. There is no significant difference in time to antibiotics administration across different source of sepsis, different hospital/ICU and present or absent of persistent hypotension. Conclusions Compliance of early blood culture and early antibiotic administration in Hong Kong cohort were comparable to international cohorts