Homeopathic treatment of septic patients

Mortality in patients with severe sepsis remains high, despite the development of several therapeutic strategies. Homeopathy might help to improve the situation of critically ill patients suffering from severe sepsis. This is the outcome of personal experience in treating septic patients as well as the outcome of a randomised doubleblinded trial.

Classical homeopathy is applied in septic patients, taking into account and paying notable attention with respect to a possible trigger, as underlying cause for the outbreak of sepsis. Repertorization is performed collecting the symptom-totality presented by relatives and colleagues, too, as well as all vegetative symptoms observed during stay at the intensive care unit.

One of the major remedies shown to be beneficial is lachesis muta given as a 200 C potency, given once or several times daily. Especially in patients suffering from septic fever and coagulation impairments, lachesis has been shown to act most effectively, it triggers perspiration, especially in patients suffering from embolism. Acidum arsenicosum (=arsenicum album) may help in patients with cardiac insufficiency and decreased blood pressure. Baptisia is one of the remedies helpful in patients with adult respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS).

Several case-reports fortify the strength of homeopathy in very severe medical cases. Cooperation with colleagues is of major importance. In addition, our data suggests that homeopathic treatment may be useful, as an additional therapeutic measure (add-on) with a long-term benefit, for severely septic patients admitted to the intensive care unit. A constraint to wider application of this method is the limited number of trained homeopaths.