stable or decreasing rates of hospitalizations
for the infections that
most commonly cause sepsis
(pneumonia, urinary tract infections,
intraabdominal infections,
and bacteremia). Other claimsbased
analyses suggest that rising
sepsis rates have been accompanied
by a steady decrease in
sepsis-related mortality rates.4 Although
decreasing mortality rates
may be due to improvements in
care, it is also possible that progressively
more sensitive coding
is capturing a larger but less severely
ill group of patients over
time. These incongruities raise
the possibility that the apparent
surge in incidence over the past
decade may be at least partly due
to changes in coding practices
rather than a true increase in
sepsis rates.