What is it about?
A low-cost, low-risk sepsis care bundle was discovered to vastly reduce mortality and morbidity. The clinical evidence is thin, but delaying care until multi-centre RCTs could be costly. We model the opportunity cost of delaying treatment and offer an alternative method of clinical decision-making in situations of significant uncertainty.
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Why is it important?
We present a rationale for trial adoption of novel treatments in cases of clinical inactivity using the example of high value sepsis care. Our findings show that there are vast opportunity costs if the bundle is successful and we do nothing, but lose little in terms of dollars and nothing in terms of health benefits if we implement an unsuccessful treatment.
Perspectives
This is a thought piece. It is not an endorsement of the sepsis bundle, nor is it an endorsement of implementing each and every new "miracle cure." It is a call for greater involvement and contribution from the medical community in situations where we have little to lose and much to gain in cases of clinical equipoise.
Robin Blythe
Queensland University of Technology
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Scepticaemia: The impact on the health system and patients of delaying new treatments with uncertain evidence; a case study of the sepsis bundle, F1000Research, April 2018, Faculty of 1000, Ltd.,
DOI: 10.12688/f1000research.14619.1.
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