Christie Teigland, PhD: The Cost of C Difficile and Sepsis

Both sepsis and Clostridioides difficile infections (CDI) can be dangerous life-threatening complications for hospitalized patients.

Recently, in data presented during the 2021 Digestive Disease Week Virtual Meeting, a research team found CDI patients with sepsis were significantly more likely to die than CDI patients without sepsis, as well as spend significantly more in health care expenses.

In the study, the investigators identified 487,489 individuals with CDI, 41% (n = 203,888) of which also had concurrent sepsis. The researchers found 57.7% of the patients with sepsis died, compared to 32.4% of patients without sepsis.

There was also demographic trends found with CDI patients with sepsis.

These patients were generally younger, male, black, dually eligible for Medicaid, and had higher Charlson Comorbidity Index scores.

In an interview with HCPLive®, Christie Teigland, PhD, Vice President of Advanced Analytics for Avalere Health, and co-author of the study, explained how the results could drive new decisions to try to reduce the rates of both sepsis and CDI in hospitalized patients.

Teigland said in the study the researchers identified precursors to the more severe outcomes in this patient population that could be used for preventive measures in the future and to ultimately reduce some of the health care costs associated with CDI patients with sepsis.