Rhode Island Hospital first in North America to install revolutionary technology
This technology is aimed at getting better at diagnosing and treating the potentially deadly infection known as sepsis.
Sepsis is an infection that causes organs to fail.
Every hour that goes by without a diagnosis or the right treatments, makes it more deadly.
"It's estimated that one in five deaths in the world are actually caused by sepsis," said Dr. Sean Monaghan, a long time sepsis researcher at Rhode Island Hospital, a Brown University Health facility.
For every hour of delayed treatment, there's a 7% chance of dying, said Monaghan.
Here's the problem:
"Right now when a patient has sepsis we send samples for culture and that could take days to come back," said Monaghan.
"One of the keys to sepsis is getting the people the right antibiotic as fast as possible."
Now, they have new technology, known as QIAcuityDx.
"It's going to allow us to actually identify the bacteria faster."
Instead of days, it takes about four hours.
This research is a partnership between Rhode Island Hospital and the National Institutes of Health to pioneer this faster, lifesaving approach, identifying in particular those that have an infection resistant to certain antibiotics.
"In sepsis we try to give antibiotics that cover most things, but there's still patients that either they have a bacteria that's not common in our area, or a bacteria that has resistance that we don't see often and those are the patients that really would benefit the most from this," said Monaghan, who said this technology is like a PCR, the test used to diagnose COVID.
Instead of a yes or no, on whether you have COVID, he said this new digital test will give you 26,000 yes's and no's, honing in on a precise cause of sepsis.
They've been collecting samples from previous patients who've agreed to take part in this research.
These patients, through cultures have a known specific diagnosis.
They'll use the QiAcuityDx technology, which again produces results in hours instead of days, to confirm it comes up with the same results.
The hope is that it eventually becomes FDA approved and is used widespread.