Complex systems analysis: a tool for shock research.

For the past century, students of shock have focused research efforts to illuminate specific mechanisms that cause, or fail as a consequence of, circulatory collapse. Although clinical strategies aimed at supporting or restoring individual organ systems have proven effective, many patients succumb to more generalized multiple organ system failure. We suggest that general biological systems failure cannot be interpreted through reliance on reductionist science. We propose that complex systems analysis is an essential tool for shock research and we evaluate its application to genomic technologies.