The study by Churpek and colleagues was designed to evaluate both the frequency of urgent lactate measurements and their association with clinician interventions and mortality. An elevated lactate level means that a patient’s cells are not getting enough oxygen, sometimes as a result of inadequate blood flow. Septic patients who develop high lactate levels would benefit from urgent therapies, such as antibiotics, the study authors agreed. But they worried that the SEP-1 bundle could greatly increase the number of lactates checked on patients and that the association between delays in initial lactate measurement and mortality.

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