Enhancing Sepsis Care with Analytics (Part 1): Exploring Mean Arterial Pressure (MAP) and Clinical Pathways
Updated: Jan 9
How can an infection lead to a life threatening disease if it's not detected early and action has not taken on time. Yes, In this blog we are talking about that kind of disease called SEPSIS. In healthcare and in hospitals it is one of the diseases that cause high mortality. It's the expansive condition in US hospitals which need more resources to tackle like ICU, ventilators, longer stays. It has frequent readmission to the hospital of patients. It needs long-term healthcare after discharge. That's why Early detection, intervention, Analyzing this problem and Prevention is required.
I have Analyzed the Sepsis with the healthcare patient dataset using tableau. I will be sharing my analysis and clinical insights.
First of all, what is sepsis?
Sepsis is your body’s extreme reaction to an infection. When you have an infection, your immune system tries to fight it. But sometimes your immune system stops fighting the infection and starts damaging normal tissues and organs, leading to widespread inflammation throughout your body. This needs urgent care otherwise it will lead to medical emergency, organ failure or even death.
There are 3 stages that sepsis affects our body.
1.Sepsis (Stage 1)
What it is: The initial stage where an infection triggers a systemic inflammatory response, meaning the immune system attacks the body's own tissues.
Symptoms: Fever, chills, rapid heart rate, rapid breathing, confusion, or generally feeling very ill.
2.Severe Sepsis(Stage 2)
What it is: Sepsis complicated by organ malfunction, as blood flow to organs becomes compromised.
Symptoms: Symptoms of sepsis plus signs of organ distress, such as decreased urination, shortness of breath, disorientation, extreme weakness, or discolored skin patches.
3.Speptic Shock(Stage 3)
What it is: The most dangerous stage, characterized by severe sepsis with dangerously low blood pressure that doesn't improve with fluid treatment, leading to multiple organ failure.
Symptoms: All symptoms of severe sepsis, plus dangerously low blood pressure, rapid heart rate, and often cool, clammy skin.
After getting little understanding of Sepsis. Lets start with our Analysis.
First I will give information about the dataset that I have analyzed. In the dataset I have demographics columns like patients id, age, gender, ICU units (MICU and SICU), Hospital admission time, length of stay and The most important Sepsis Label.
Biomarkers like heart rate ,Blood Pressure(Systolic and Diastolic),Mean Arterial pressure(MAP), Temperature, Creatinine and many more.
Lets start with our Analysis. I have analyzed the MAP Distribution by Gender And Age.
MAP most commonly stands for Mean Arterial Pressure, representing the average pressure in a patient's arteries over one cardiac cycle, crucial for assessing vital organ blood flow. Its the good indicator just systolic or diastolic pressure alone, especially in critical care.
In this above Violin chart we are filtering MAP in three categories: "Low MAP (<65)" ,"Normal MAP(65–84)" and "High MAP (≥85)". Age is categorized as "Child (<18)","Young Adult (18–39)","Middle Age (40–64)","Older Adult (65+)".
This Violin chart offers critical insights into Hemodynamic patterns meaning it tells the different ways blood pressure, flow, and volume behave in the cardiovascular system in sepsis. It exhibits that Older populations for both male and females have more MAP variability.
Lets see the below chart image, Low MAP (<65) We analyzed that we are seeing elevated representation in older age for both genders. The Middle Bulge shows Female count at older age are at 36% and male count at older age at 33% and middle aged gender count of female 22% and male at 18 % and young male and female are at 4%.
Below image, For High MAP (≥85) category below image we get analyzed that male patients count above 65 age at 12 - 13% and middle aged are at 9%. Female patient count both age above 65 and middle age are at 9%. Both young people of both genders are at 3%.
For Normal MAP(65–84) category The middle bulge shows that older adults are concentrated near the lower edge of normal MAP. They are not in danger yet but are vulnerable.
The insight we got from above MAP chart is that Falling under the 65 mmHg signals that you are at risk of Low perfusion means reduced blood flow to tissues, depriving them of oxygen and nutrients, leading to symptoms like cold extremities, pale skin, weakness, and slow healing and it can damage heart and organs.
That's why 65mmHg is the Universal Minimum Target for Sepsis Detection. And falling under this threshold will be life threatening.
Next I Analyzed MAP Category Distribution of Patients by Sepsis Label
Further analyzing MAP with Sepsis labels, In above bubble chart we have used the Sepsis category as Non- sepsis, Sepsis and Onset. This chart shows that most patients with normal or high MAP are non-septic.
Low MAP contains a good concentration of sepsis patients, despite fewer total patients overall. Indicates hypoperfusion, indicator of septic shock.
Conclusion
The Key insights we get from both charts together give a complete and clinically meaningful picture of how MAP relates to sepsis risk. The violin chart shows how MAP values are distributed across age and gender, revealing that older adults—especially older females—tend to cluster near the lower edge of the normal MAP range, making them more vulnerable to slipping below the critical 65 mmHg threshold. This helps identify who is at risk before hypotension actually occurs. The bubble chart then confirms where sepsis actually concentrates, showing that the Low MAP group (<65 mmHg) contains higher number of sepsis patients compared to the normal or high MAP groups.
Together, these visuals demonstrate that MAP reduction is a strong early indicator of sepsis, highlight vulnerable populations, and reinforce why 65 mmHg is the universal minimum MAP target for detecting and managing sepsis effectively.
I will be further analyzing the Sepsis with BUN Biomarker in my next blog "Enhancing Sepsis Care with Analytics (Part 2) : Exploring BUN Trends, Kidney Stress and Clinical Pathways ".The link is https://www.numpyninjaacademy.com/post/enhancing-sepsis-care-with-analytics-part-2-exploring-bun-trends-kidney-stress-and-clinical-pat
