Septic shock in the prehospital setting: a scoping review.

Abstract

Septic shock (SS) is a potential life-threatening condition in which an early identification and immediate therapy stand out as the main cornerstones to improve survival chance; in this context, emergency medical services (EMS) become key to reduce the time between diagnosis and management in the ICU or emergency department. However, guidelines for the prehospital management of SS patients remains unclear, and literature around this topic is scant. Our scoping review was conducted following the PICO framework and a search strategy related to septic shock management and diagnosis in prehospital settings was executed in PubMed, Scopus and Virtual Health Library; articles in English and Spanish from 2015, onwards, were screened by the authors and selected by mutual consensus. Our aim is to analyze the prehospital management strategies of SS reported in the literature, and to showcase and summarize the screening tools, demographic factors, clinical manifestations and prognostic factors of SS in the prehospital setting.