New study highlights burden of paediatric sepsis and urgent need for clinical trials

A landmark multicentre study led by Associate Professor Elliot Long and colleagues in the Paediatric Research in Emerging Departments International Collaboration (PREDICT) network has been published in The Lancet Regional Health – Western Pacific, offering a comprehensive snapshot of community-acquired sepsis in children across Australia and New Zealand.

Drawing on data from over 820,000 emergency department presentations across 11 hospitals, the SENTINEL study identified more than 6,200 children hospitalised with suspected sepsis, including a high-risk subgroup defined using the international Phoenix sepsis criteria.

Children meeting these criteria were significantly more likely to require intensive care, mechanical ventilation, vasoactive support, and extracorporeal life support. Alarmingly, this high-risk group accounted for almost half of all 90-day mortality, despite representing less than 5% of the cohort.

These findings underscore the profound burden of sepsis in children and highlight gaps in current recognition tools, with many children requiring critical care not meeting Phoenix criteria. The data provide a vital foundation for the design of future interventional trials aimed at improving early diagnosis, risk stratification, and treatment pathways for paediatric sepsis—an urgent global health priority.