Journal Article

Treating Patients with Severe Sepsis

Bernard, Gordon R, Wheeler, Arthur P

1999

Overview

Sepsis is an infection-induced syndrome defined as the presence of two or more of the following features of systemic inflammation: fever or hypothermia, leukocytosis or leukopenia, tachycardia, and tachypnea or a supranormal minute ventilation. 1 When an organ system begins to fail because of sepsis, the sepsis is considered severe. Each year, sepsis develops in more than 500,000 patients in the United States, and only 55 to 65 percent survive. 2 , 3 Fortunately, the death rates in some subgroups of patients with sepsis-induced organ failure have decreased, even though there is no specific therapy for sepsis. 3 , 4 The reduced mortality may be . . .

• Publisher: Massachusetts Medical Society
• Subject: Anesthesia. Intensive care medicine. Transfusions. Cell therapy and gene therapy / Anti-Bacterial Agents - therapeutic use / Biological and medical sciences / Cardiac arrhythmia / Cytokines / Emergency and intensive care: infection, septic shock / Humans / Infections / Intensive care medicine / Medical sciences / Metabolites / Mortality / Multiple Organ Failure - etiology / Nutritional Physiological Phenomena / Respiration, Artificial / Respiratory Insufficiency - etiology / Respiratory Insufficiency - therapy / Rodents / Sepsis / Sepsis - classification / Sepsis - etiology / Sepsis - physiopathology / Sepsis - therapy / Shock, Septic - etiology / Shock, Septic - therapy / Vasoconstrictor Agents - therapeutic use / Ventilation