How long for sepsis symptoms to start after being exposed?

Answer 1

Sepsis is not a disease in itself that you "catch", it is a systemic immune system reaction with a spread in your body of some type of infectious organism, most often bacterial. It is also sometimes called septicemia, SIRS, or "blood poisoning". Usually it starts after a localized infection, like pneumonia in the lungs, a urinary tract infection, cellulitis of the skin, a wound infection, etc., which gets severe and the organism growth is prolific allowing the local infection to spread in the whole body or other locations in your body through the blood stream.

How long after a local infection starts before sepsis begins is variable depending on the type of organism, the local body system infected, how effective antibiotics or other treatments are against that organism, what your state of health is at the time of the infection, your age, how rapidly the organism can reproduce, etc.

If you have a high fever and/or chills, nausea and vomiting, thirst, diarrhea, fatigue, shortness of breath, extreme weakness and lack of appetite, etc. it is possible that your infection has spread through the whole body. At the first of the signs and symptoms, contact your physician even if you already are taking medication such as antibiotics, or getting other treatment, to be sure you are taking the right drug for the organism involved, to test for organisms in the blood stream and to find the specific cause of those "whole body" symptoms.