The most common keywords related to septic patients’ symptom presentation were: abnormal/ suspected abnormal temperature (64.1.%), pain (38.4%), acute altered mental status (38.2%), weakness of the legs (35.1%), breathing difficulties (30.4%), loss of energy (26.2%) and gastrointestinal symptoms (24.0%). There was an association between keywords and in-hospital mortality. Symptoms varied between age categories, survivors/ deceased and severe/ non-severe sepsis.

Information relating to symptom presentation is not included in current sepsis screening tools. We suggest that keywords related to patients´ symptom presentation could be integrated into screening tools and may thus increase the identification of sepsis, and potentially also identify high-risk patients. However, as a first step, the specificity of these keywords, with respect to sepsis, needs to be examined.

Eighty patients admitted during 2012 were included in the content analysis. To include 80 EMS records, we needed to analyze 85 EMS records, in turn selected through the maximum variation sampling method. Five patients of the 85 analyzed were excluded due to exclusion criteria. Three hundred fifty-nine patients admitted during 2012 were included in the quantification of keywords.

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