Of everything in this app, this is the page most likely to change an outcome, and it teaches recognition rather than treatment. There is no home treatment for sepsis. What there is, is the difference between reaching help early and reaching it late, and that difference is measured in hours.
Why this page exists
Sepsis kills tens of thousands of people a year in the UK, and a large share of those deaths involve a delay in recognising it. It is not a rare tropical thing. It follows ordinary infections: a chest infection, a urine infection, a cut that got dirty, flu, an abscess, a burn.
The problem is that it looks like ordinary illness until quite suddenly it does not. People die having been seen, having been assessed, having been told it was probably a virus.
In a household without easy access to care, the recognition burden falls entirely on you, and any infected wound in the wound care pages can lead here.
What sepsis actually is
The body's response to an infection turning on the body itself. The immune reaction becomes systemic: blood pressure falls, circulation to the skin and organs is reduced, and organs begin to fail.
Three consequences that matter practically:
- The original infection can be minor. A small wound, a tooth, a scratch. The severity of sepsis is not proportional to the severity of the infection that started it.
- It moves fast. Deterioration over hours, not days. Someone who seemed poorly at breakfast can be critically ill by evening.
- The treatment is antibiotics and fluids, urgently, in hospital. Every hour of delay in giving antibiotics measurably increases mortality. That is the entire reason this page is about speed.
Adult red flags
"I feel like I'm going to die" is on that list because it is diagnostically real, not because it is dramatic. It comes up repeatedly in sepsis accounts and it is worth taking at face value in a way you would not with most complaints. If someone says it, act on it.
Mottled skin looks like a purplish or bluish lacy, marbled pattern, most often on the knees, legs, arms or trunk. It means the circulation to the skin is shutting down. It is a late and serious sign.
Passing no urine is easy to miss because nobody is watching. Ask directly: when did you last go?
Children five and over
Babies and children under five
The glass test
For any rash, in anyone.
Press the side of a clear drinking glass firmly against the rash. Most rashes fade under pressure and reappear when you lift it. A rash that stays visible through the glass does not blanch, and a non-blanching rash is a medical emergency.
Two things people get wrong:
- It is not only about meningitis. A non-blanching rash indicates bleeding into the skin, which occurs in sepsis generally.
- The absence of a rash proves nothing. Most people with sepsis never develop one, and a rash is a late sign when it appears. Never wait for a rash before acting. People have died waiting for the rash to confirm what the other signs were already telling them.
Check on pale skin and dark skin differently: on darker skin, look at paler areas, the palms and soles, the abdomen, the inside of the eyelids and the roof of the mouth.
Say the word
Trust the trajectory over the snapshot. The strongest signal in sepsis is not any single measurement, it is that someone is getting worse, quickly, and is worse than you have seen them with an ordinary illness. A parent's or partner's sense that "this is different" is a genuinely valuable clinical signal and is treated as one.