Abstract
INTRODUCTION: Urosepsis is a severe infection that can cause shock afterwards. The purpose of this study is to investigate the clinical and bacterial risk factors for shock in those cases with urosepsis caused by urinary tract infection in a multicentre study. METHODS: Our study included 77 consecutive urosepsis cases from four hospitals. We examined factors such as patient characteristics, underlying disease, serum white blood cell (WBC) count, platelet count, C-reactive protein (CRP) level at the time of diagnosis of urosepsis, urinary tract occlusion, causative bacteria, and bacterial antibiotic susceptibilities. Statistical analyses were performed to assess the potential risk factors for shock during the clinical course of urosepsis by a multivariate analysis. RESULTS: We had 38 male and 39 female patients aged 25-104 (median 73). Underlying diseases included cancers (n=22, 28.6 %) and diabetes mellitus (n=17, 22.1 %). Positive blood culture was seen in 74 cases; these involved 88 bacterial strains, of which Escherichia coli was the most common (34 strains, 38.6 %). There were 31 cases with shock (40.3 %) and multivariate analyses demonstrated that serum CRP was the only clinical risk factor for shock due to urosepsis. CONCLUSIONS: Our study demonstrated that serum CRP was a risk factor for shock during urosepsis in a multicentre analysis. Further prospective studies with a greater number of patients are needed to draw more definitive conclusions.