Longer time to antibiotics and higher mortality among septic patients with non-specific presentations -a cross sectional study of Emergency Department patients indicating that a screening tool may improve identification

Table 4 Sensitivity and specificity of the Robson screening tool and ED doctor clinical judgment. Sensitivity and specificity of the Robson screening tool and ED doctor clinical judgment with respect to sepsis identification*, among adult ED patients presenting with DGC

	Septic patients (according to discharge ICD-code) presenting to the ED with chief complaint DGC	DGC reference group-total	DGC reference group-patients with infectious discharge diagnosis are excluded
	n = 61	n = 61	n = 38
The Robson screening tool**
Sepsis according to tool	34 (true positive, 63.0 % ^a)	13 (false positive, 31.7 %)	5 (false positive, 19.2 %)
No sepsis according to tool	20 (false negative, 37.0 %)	28 (true negative, 68.3 % ^b)	21 (true negative, 80.8 % ^b)
Clinical judgment
Sepsis according to clinical judgment	15 (true positive, 24.6 % ^a)	0 (false positive, 0.0 %)	0 (false positive, 0.0 %)
No sepsis according to clinical judgment	46 (false negative, 75.4 %)	61 (true negative, 100.0 % ^b)	38 (true negative, 100.0 % ^b)

ED Emergency Department, DGC Decreased General Condition
*Reference sepsis is defined as discharge ICD-code sepsis upon discharge and exclusion of all patients developing signs of infection ≥48 h after ED admittance
**Only patients with documentation for all required parameters for the Robson screening tool are included in the analysis
Bold characters indicate the sensitivity^a and specificity^b of the Robson screening tool and clinical judgment

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