Published in:
01-12-2004 | Commentary
The challenge of sepsis
Author:
Mitchell M Levy
Published in:
Critical Care
|
Issue 6/2004
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Excerpt
In this issue of
Critical Care, Poeze and coworkers [
1] report the results of an international survey of physicians' attitudes about sepsis. There are several important messages for clinicians that emerge when reviewing the results of this survey. First, most physicians believed there was no single consensus definition of sepsis, despite the original consensus definitions published in 1992 [
2]. Second, the large majority of intensivists believed that better monitoring is needed to diagnosis sepsis earlier. Third, the large majority of respondents believed that patients are treated too late to reverse the onset of sepsis. Finally, patients and their families have a poor understanding of the condition, which makes communication with care givers difficult. …