BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Establish the clinical, epidemiological and laboratorial characteristics of septic patients in an intensive care unit (ICU) of a tertiary care private hospital from Pernambuco, in the northeast of Brazil. METHODS: Cohort study without intervention that included adult patients admitted in the ICU with sepsis or that developed it during ICU stay, during a 6-month period. The patients were followed during all ICU stay period. Laboratory and clinical data were collected after sepsis diagnosis. ICU admission APACHE II score and the SOFA score during the three first days after inclusion in the study were collected. RESULTS: The study included 199 patients, of whom 67.8% were older than 65 years of age. More than a half (56.3%) survived the septic episode, mean APACHE II was 18.2 ± 6.3 and mean SOFA score was 6.3 ± 3.7. The disease related to the admission in ICU was medical in 85.4%, and the majority of patients had a chronic associated disease. In 79.3% the lungs were the source of sepsis and in 40% of patients the etiologic agent of sepsis was isolated. Amongst laboratory tests, thrombocytopenia (platelets < 100.000/mm³) was observed on 20.6%, fibrinogen was elevated (> 300 mg/dL) on 81.7%, and the activity of antithrombin was low (< 70%) on 32.5% of patients. CONCLUSIONS: The epidemiology of sepsis in this study, in a private hospital of Recife, was no different from what was recently described in Southeast and South of Brazil, United States and Europe.
adults; mortality; risk factors; sepsis
