Beckman Coulter sponsors 2nd World Sepsis Conference
Beckman Coulter has announced that it is a gold sponsor of the 2nd World Sepsis Congress, a free-of-charge online conference, hosted by the Global Sepsis Alliance, that will be held Sept. 5 and 6, 2018. Over the course of 17 sessions, more than 100 speakers from approximately 30 countries will discuss the wide-ranging implications of sepsis and how to raise public awareness of this often-fatal condition.
Sepsis affects 26 million people worldwide each year, and is increasing at a rate of 1.5 percent annually. In the United States alone, about 1.6 million people are diagnosed with the disease. Additionally, it is the third leading cause of death, claiming more than 258,000 lives in the U.S. each year.
“Sepsis is one of the world’s deadliest diseases that often goes undiagnosed,” said Peter Soltani, Ph.D., senior vice president and general manager of Beckman Coulter’s hematology business. “As many as 80 percent of sepsis deaths could be prevented with rapid diagnosis and treatment.”
“We are proud to be a sponsor of the 2nd World Sepsis Congress,” said Soltani, “since its goals align perfectly with our commitment to empowering healthcare professionals with the tools and resources that enable them to detect sepsis as early as possible during patient care.”
Delayed treatment of sepsis can cause cardiovascular collapse, tissue damage, organ failure and ultimately death. Even patients with less severe sepsis can progress to the more severe condition, septic shock, within 72 hours, and up to half of those patients will die as a result. Timely and accurate detection solutions, in an acute-care setting where treatment can be initiated, are key components to stopping the progression of the disease. In fact, when antibiotics are administered early to patients with septic shock, the likelihood of death decreases by 7.6 percent per hour.
In answer to the urgent need for a fast and an accurate detection solution, in June 2018, Beckman Coulter filed a submission for 510(k) clearance with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for its Early Sepsis Indicator, a hematology-based solution designed to alert emergency room clinicians to any patient who might possibly be at risk for developing sepsis. It recently achieved European CE Mark, and is commercially available in select countries for use with the company’s DxH 900 hematology analyzer, which was released in May 2018.
