National Estimates of Pediatric Sepsis in US Hospitals Using Clinical Data

What is the burden of nonneonatal pediatric sepsis in US hospitals using an electronic health record–based surveillance definition aligned with the 2024 Phoenix criteria?In this retrospective cohort study of more than 3.9 million pediatric hospitalizations, a Pediatric Sepsis Event (PSE) definition identified sepsis in 1.3% of encounters with 10.1% in-hospital mortality and in 17.8% of hospitalizations that culminated in death, corresponding to more than 18 000 US cases and more than 1800 deaths annually. Neither sepsis cases nor deaths changed significantly from 2016 to 2022.The PSE criteria provide a standardized, scalable framework for pediatric sepsis surveillance and underscore its substantial burden among hospitalized US children.

Corresponding Author: Chanu Rhee, MD, MPH, Department of Population Medicine, Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute, 401 Park Dr, Ste 401, Boston, MA 02215 (crhee@bwh.harvard.edu).

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