Lactate in the ED, Death on the Floors
I gave a talk last week on the workup of nonsevere sepsis that referenced a bunch of little papers, and a few big ones… We’ll leave the discussion of the landmark 2001 EGDT severe-sepsis talk for another time (sigh). Right now I just wanted to go over an Annals paper (AEM Vol 45, No 5, May ‘05) by Shapiro et al from Beth-Israel Deaconess, about lactate in the ED. They were looking at the value of ED serum lactate levels as a predictor of later mortality – echoing studies on ICU lactate and mortality for patients with septic shock, burns, or trauma. Read more »
