Cancer and dementia are significant risk factors that elevate mortality rates among patients with sepsis in the emergency medical department, a study released on Tuesday has raised alarm.

Sepsis is a critical condition arising when the body's immune system reacts excessively to an infection, leading to organ dysfunction. This extreme response damages the body's own tissues and organs, potentially resulting in shock, multiple organ failure, and even death if not promptly recognized and treated.

The research team from Denmark found that age and heart disease are additional factors contributing to increased mortality risk in sepsis patients within two years.

“We found that certain factors increased the risk of death after sepsis, including, not surprisingly, advanced age,” said Dr. Finn E. Nielsen, a senior scientist in the Department of Clinical Epidemiology at Aarhus University Hospital, Denmark.

“Additionally, conditions such as dementia, heart disease, cancer, and previous hospitalisation with sepsis within the last six months before admission also elevated the risk of dying during a median follow-up period of two years,” Nielsen said.

In the paper, presented at the European Emergency Medicine Congress in Copenhagen, the team examined deaths over a long follow-up period in a prospective study of 714 adult patients admitted to the emergency department with sepsis between October 2017 and the end of March 2018.

The team found that after a median of two years, 361 (50.6 per cent) of the patients with sepsis had died from any cause, including sepsis.

Older age increases the risk of death by 4 per cent for every additional year of age.

Sepsis can affect anyone, but people who are older, very young, pregnant or have other health problems are at higher risk.

Common signs of sepsis include fever, fast heart rate, rapid breathing, confusion and body pain. It can lead to septic shock, multiple organ failure and death.