Sepsis, the most common cause of admission to an intensive care unit (ICU), has had an increased incidence and prevalence over the last years with a simultaneous decrease in its short-term mortality. Sepsis survivors are more frequently discharged from hospital and often experience long-term outcomes such as late mortality, immune dysfunction, secondary infections, impaired quality of life, and...

Introduction Sepsis management is a challenge for hospitals nationwide, as severe sepsis carries high mortality rates and costs the US healthcare system billions of dollars each year. It has been shown that early intervention for patients with severe sepsis and septic shock is associated with higher rates of survival. The Cape Regional Medical Center (CRMC) aimed to improve sepsis-related patie...

The clinical response of sepsis to a systemic inflammatory infection may be complicated by disseminated intravascular coagulation or DIC. In order to experimentally study the syndrome of DIC, we aimed for a severe sepsis model complicated by disseminated coagulation. Most-simplified-experimental models describing coagulation abnormalities as a consequence of sepsis are based on single dose endo...

BACKGROUND In patients with sepsis the production of arachidonic acid metabolites by cyclooxygenase increases, but the pathophysiologic role of these prostaglandins is unclear. In animal models, inhibition of cyclooxygenase by treatment with ibuprofen before the onset of sepsis reduces physiologic abnormalities and improves survival. In pilot studies of patients with sepsis, treatment with ibup...

Sepsis predisposes the host to a number of infectious sequelae, particularly the development of nosocomial pneumonia. Mechanisms by which sepsis results in impairment of lung antibacterial host defense have not been well defined. Alveolar macrophages (AM) represent important immune effector cells of the lung airspace. In this study, we examined the effects of cecal ligation and puncture (CLP) o...

AIM Unbalanced hemostasis and disseminated intravenous coagulopathy serve as key participants in organ dysfunction and disability. In this study we evaluated the coagulation profiles of patients diagnosed with systemic inflammatory syndrome (SIRS)-sepsis and multiple organ dysfunction syndrome. We also researched coagulation in sepsis by comparing thromboelastography (TEG) data with those of no...

INTRODUCTION Hyperferritinemia is associated with increased mortality in pediatric sepsis, multiple organ dysfunction syndrome (MODS), and critical illness. The International Histiocyte Society has recommended that children with hyperferritinemia and secondary hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis (HLH) or macrophage activation syndrome (MAS) should be treated with the same immunosuppressant/cytot...

BACKGROUND Patients with sepsis syndrome commonly have low serum selenium levels. Several randomized controlled trials have examined the efficacy of selenium supplementation on mortality in patients with sepsis. OBJECTIVE To determine the efficacy and safety of high-dose selenium supplementation compared to placebo for the reduction of mortality in patients with sepsis. SOURCES OF DATA We s...