Researchers have drawn a direct line between the number of Clostridioides difficile infection (CDI) episodes patients have and their likelihood of experiencing sepsis or requiring colorectal surgery. Their review of a national database showed 43% of individuals with three or more CDI recurrences experienced sepsis and more than 10% required colorectal surgery.
“While there is significant knowledge about the epidemiology and clinical manifestations of CDI, fewer clinical data exist from real-world analyses [about] complications of sepsis and bowel surgery, and the available data are not adequately generalizable to a broad U.S. population,” according to the researchers, led by Paul Feuerstadt, MD, an assistant clinical professor at Yale School of Medicine, in New Haven, Conn. (Sage Open Med 2021 Jan 14. doi:10.1177/2050312120986733).
Feuerstadt and his team sought to fill this gap by retrospectively analyzing a national claims database (IQVIA PharMetrics Plus). They found 46,571 adults with at least one CDI between 2010 and 2017. Patients were a mean 47 years of age at the time of index CDI and most were female.