Sepsis: Correlation of laboratory findings and animal survival rate

Sepsis has become one of the biggest challenges in veterinary medicine. Sepsis is defined as an organic dysfunction resulting from an inadequate immune response to an infectious agent, threatening the life of the animal. The aim of this study was to verify the occurrence of the most frequent diseases that led animals to sepsis in the consultations performed at the Veterinary Hospital (HV) of the Universidade Vila Velha (UVV), in Vila Velha/ Espírito Santo, Brazil, observing the laboratorial alterations related to sepsis and correlating them with the life expectancy of those animals. Through a retrospective study, there was a survey of the cases seen in the period from August to December 2019. The data were tabulated and analyzed by software using a 5% significance level. The main diseases that led to sepsis were in order of frequency erliquiosis, pyometra and gastroenteritis; furthermore, it was observed that the factors influencing the survival of these animals were alteration in the values of total leukocytes (p=0.042) and the presence of azotemia (urea p <0.001 and creatinine p=0.003). This demonstrated the importance of laboratory findings in conjunction with clinical changes, allowing agility in the identification of an ongoing systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS).