Sepsis: National Register

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff Excerpts

Wednesday 30th January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Manzoor]

My Lords, that is a very good question. We are working very closely with clinicians to ensure that they have the tools to diagnose this very serious condition. We do not yet have good data on all the long-term effects of sepsis, but we have developed data analysis tools that look at all people admitted to hospital with infections, or sepsis, to see the impact of actions over a long time. Of course, we are training junior doctors and others to recognise sepsis in the early stages of the illness, as people are admitted to accident and emergency, and we have set up data collection for serious incidences of sepsis.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

Do the Government recognise that such a registry must go right across primary and secondary care, given that patients present at all parts of the pathway and 25% of survivors have long-term sequelae from sepsis? In that process, will the Government undertake to look at and learn from the 1000 Lives Improvement project in Wales and the HealthPathways project in Cardiff and the Vale, which have themselves learned from experience in New Zealand?

[Baroness Manzoor]

My Lords, the NHS takes this issue very seriously. NHS England and clinicians are working together very closely to make sure that we have good, clear datasets to enable us to diagnose this illness at a very early stage. Where good work is being done, we are looking at that very carefully.