The assessment of severity of lung injury in sepsis

Abstract

Adult respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) is an acute and severe pulmonary dysfunction. It is clinically characterized by dyspnea and tachypnea, progressive hypoxemia (within 12-48 hours), reduction of pulmonary compliance and diffuse bilateral infiltrates seen on pulmonary radiogram. Etiological factors giving rise to development of the syndrome are numerous. The acute lung injury (AU) is defined as the inflammation syndrome and increased permeability, which is associated with radiological and physiological disorders. Lung injury score (LIS), which is composed of four components, is used for making a distinction between two separate but rather similar syndromes. The study was aimed at the assessment of the severity of the lung injury in patients who had suffered from sepsis of the gynecological origin and its influence on the outcome of the disease. The total of 43 female patients was analyzed. Twenty patients (46.51%) were diagnosed as having ARDS based on the lung injury score, while 23 patients (53.48%) were diagnosed with acute lung injury. In our series, lung injury score ranged from 0.7 to 3.3 in ARDS patients, and lethal outcome ensued in 11 (55%) cases in this group. As for the patients with the acute lung injury, the score values ranged from 0.3 to 1.3 and only one patient from this group died (4.34%). The obtained results indicate that high values of the lung injury score are suggestive of the severe respiratory dysfunction as well as that lethal outcome is dependent on LIS value.