June 30, 2023

MedPageToday

Avir Mitra, MD, an emergency medicine physician and assistant professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, who is also a spokesperson for the American College of Emergency Physicians, said that people get bacterial infections all the time, such as urinary tract infections, pneumonia, or even pimples.

"But the most important thing that we get worried about is ... sepsis," Mitra said. "That's probably what she had if she had to be in the ICU," though he noted bacterial meningitis is also a possibility.

According to Mitra, sepsis occurs when an infection spreads throughout the body "and the immune system is so revved up to fight that infection, that it actually starts sort of fighting the body."

"Your immune system is going so haywire that basically a lot of the fluid in your body is leaking out from where it should be, like in your blood vessels, and ... going in all the wrong places and your blood pressure starts to drop," he said. "That's how you die from sepsis. You go into shock."

Click here to read the full article.