312: Early Antibiotic Treatment to Severe Sepsis/Septic Shock Patients in the Emergency Department Does Not Improve Survival

Recent intensive care unit (ICU) literature suggests that antibiotic administration within one hour of recognizing severe sepsis or septic shock reduces mortality. Our aim was to extend this concept to the emergency department (ED) setting, and test the hypothesis that early treatment with antibiotics (ie, within 1 hour or within 3 hours of presentation) may similarly improve survival in the heterogeneous ED patient population.