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Sepsis & infection research
10 recent papers on sepsis & infection in paramedic and prehospital care, newest first. Each has a plain-English summary, the study design, the main finding and caveat, and what it means for Australian practice.
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Ambulance contamination hotspots: cuffs and sats probes
An Iranian cross-sectional study sampling 23 high-touch sites in ambulances (1,932 ATP tests) found the worst contamination on patient-contact kit — pulse oximeter and blood pressure cuff — and showed handwashing cut paramedic hand contamination nearly tenfold.
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Prehospital qSOFA adds a little prognostic signal
A Turkish retrospective cohort tested whether the prehospital qSOFA already recorded on the chart adds prognostic information for ambulance-transported suspected infection — it predicted 30-day mortality within every ED triage stratum but added almost nothing to a full arrival model (ΔAUC 0.007).
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EMS sepsis suspicion speeds up ED antibiotics
Single-centre Austrian cohort of 134 ED sepsis admissions found EMS documentation of sepsis suspicion was linked to antibiotics within 1 hour in 63.3% vs 19.2% of patients (aOR 5.77) and a median time-to-antibiotics of 32 vs 124.5 minutes.
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Sepsis intubations: haemodynamic trouble common
A retrospective analysis of the ANZEDAR registry (79 hospitals, 2010–26) covering 280 sepsis intubations found haemodynamic complications in 27.9% and peri-intubation cardiac arrest in 4.6%, with less waveform capnography use than non-sepsis intubations.
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Prehospital antibiotics earlier in sepsis
Thai observational cohort of 364 adults with suspected sepsis testing prehospital antibiotics — prehospital administration was associated with lower adjusted 28-day mortality (ARR 8.9%, 95% CI 0.8–17.1; aOR 0.51) and antibiotics ~125 minutes sooner, but scene times ran 8.5 minutes longer.
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Eight sepsis subgroups found, SENECA not replicated
Retrospective consensus clustering of 953 ED sepsis admissions at Oslo University Hospital could not replicate the four SENECA phenotypes, instead finding eight stable subgroups with more granular characteristics — and only 49% of patients meeting SENECA inclusion criteria fulfilled Sepsis-3, underlining sepsis heterogeneity and cohort-definition problems.
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Vaccine-preventable diseases re-emerging in EDs
Editorial on the re-emergence of vaccine-preventable diseases post-COVID — declining vaccination rates are causing outbreaks of diphtheria, measles, and other VPDs in Australasia
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EDs: opportunistic immunisation, not vaccine clinics
Editorial arguing EDs should provide opportunistic, proportionate immunisation for vulnerable patients rather than functioning as routine vaccine clinics
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Diphtheria re-emergence and ED impact
ABSTRACT Diphtheria has re‐emerged in Australia in 2026, prompting significant public health concern and placing additional demands on healthcare services.
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Ambulances and clinicians contaminated with pathogens
This study found that ambulance surfaces and clinicians remain contaminated with clinically important pathogens even after routine cleaning, suggesting current disinfection protocols may be inadequate to prevent healthcare-associated infections during patient transport.