A worldwide perspective of sepsis epidemiology and survival according to age: Observational data from the ICON audit

Purpose: To investigate age-related differences in outcomes of critically ill patients with sepsis around the world.

Methods: We performed a secondary analysis of data from the prospective ICON audit, in which all adult (>16 years) patients admitted to participating ICUs between May 8 and 18, 2012, were included, except admissions for routine postoperative observation. For this sub-analysis, the 10,012 patients with completed age data were included. They were divided into five age groups - ≤50, 51-60, 61-70, 71-80, >80 years. Sepsis was defined as infection plus at least one organ failure.

Results: A total of 2963 patients had sepsis, with similar proportions across the age groups (≤50 = 25.2%; 51-60 = 30.3%; 61-70 = 32.8%; 71-80 = 30.7%; >80 = 30.9%). Hospital mortality increased with age and in patients >80 years was almost twice that of patients ≤50 years (49.3% vs 25.2%, p < .05). The maximum rate of increase in mortality was about 0.75% per year, occurring between the ages of 71 and 77 years. In multilevel analysis, age > 70 years was independently associated with increased risk of dying.

Conclusions: The odds for death in ICU patients with sepsis increased with age with the maximal rate of increase occurring between the ages of 71 and 77 years.