A SEPSIS survivor from East Lancashire has welcomed new guidelines that say doctors should treat the infection as urgently as they would signs of a heart attack.

The new guidelines, issued by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice), warn doctors and nurses to ask ‘could this be sepsis?’ much earlier so they can be sent for treatment.

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The life-threatening illness occurs when the immune system goes into overdrive in response to an infection, damaging its own tissues and organs and leading to shock and multiple organ failure.

Julie Carman, 60, of Kelbrook, almost died when she contracted the illness twice after a cycling accident in 2008.

Mrs Carman, who volunteers for the UK Sepsis Trust, said the new guidelines help raise awareness and will lead to GPs sending more people to hospital.

She said: “For some reason it’s been on the backburner, but it affects a lot of people.

“This is about raising awareness. There’s a lot of work gone on with GPs and hospitals now also have guidelines to follow and flow charts. These guidelines give it some credibility.

“It’s important to get to hospital in time. Mine started on Friday, but I did not see a doctor until the Monday.

“The infection overwhelms your body.

“You don’t know why it happens, but it’s happening to a lot of people.

“It’s causing 44,000 deaths a year, a lot of which are preventable.

“We need to get people thinking about it.”

She said the symptoms to look out for include very high or low temperatures, especially very low temperatures in children, as well as breathlessness, mottled or bruised skin and not passing any urine.

“The guidelines say within a few hours you should be having IV antibiotics and extra fluid so your body becomes in a better position to fight it,” she said.

The retired NHS pharmaceutical technician, who was at risk of having her leg removed at the time, has recovered well taking part in park runs and a one-mile swim in Windermere to raise money for Sepsis UK.

For more information about sepsis visit sepsistrust.org.