News: Phoenix sepsis criteria outperformed standard criteria to predict child mortality, study finds

Of pediatric patients with suspected or confirmed infection admitted to a pediatric intensive care unit (PICU), the patients who met only the Phoenix Sepsis Score criteria had a higher in-hospital mortality rate (4.7%) than those who only met International Pediatric Sepsis Consensus Conference (IPSCC) criteria (1.7%), according to a recent study published in Pediatric Critical Care Medicine.

Researchers found the Phoenix criteria (created by the Society of Critical Care Medicine Pediatric Sepsis Definition Task Force in 2024) generally outperformed the IPSCC criteria at determining mortality in all children with infections and across all subgroup analyses such as age group and comorbidities, MedPage Today reported. Of the 25,000 encounters from 2012 to 2018 analyzed in the study, 43% of patients met the Phoenix criteria for sepsis, and of that percentage 28% were negative for IPSCC criteria. On the other hand, those who met IPSCC criteria but not Phoenix criteria saw a similar in-hospital mortality rate as that of patients without sepsis (1.7% compared with 1.3%).

“The accurate and timely diagnosis of sepsis and septic shock can be used for implementation of clinical best practices based on existing management guidelines (including fluid, ventilator, and nutritional management recommendations), for quality benchmarking, for epidemiological surveillance, and for enrollment in clinical trials and other research studies,” the study authors wrote. “However, as discussed in the original articles, the Phoenix criteria are not intended for early recognition of possible or suspected sepsis nor to trigger the initiation of empirical antimicrobials and early organ support, which are especially important in the outpatient and emergency setting.”

They noted that additional work on developing screening tools that are adapted to the local context is still essential in improving worldwide sepsis outcomes, as well as increasing the vigilance of clinicians and families through education and awareness campaigns.

Editor’s note: To read MedPage Today’s coverage of this story, click here. To access the Pediatric Critical Care Medicine study, click here.