A score built from ordinary bedside vital signs may help emergency doctors solve one of the hardest timing problems in medicine: deciding which patients with a suspected infection need antibiotics within the hour and which can safely be evaluated further first.
Researchers analyzed electronic health records from nearly 100,000 adults treated for suspected infection at nine US emergency departments between 2015 and 2024. Among patients with a National Early Warning Score (NEWS2) of 7 or higher, each additional hour before antibiotics was associated with increased mortality. Among patients with lower scores, earlier antibiotics were not associated with better survival.
