Going Beyond the Guidelines When it Comes to Fighting Sepsis

The Surviving Sepsis Campaign is a global effort to improve the care of patients with severe sepsis and septic shock. The first Surviving Sepsis Campaign Guidelines were published in 2004 with an updated version published in 2008. These guidelines have been endorsed by many professional organizations throughout the world and come regarded as the standard of care for the management of patients with severe sepsis. Unfortunately, most of the recommendations of these guidelines are not evidence-based. Furthermore, the major components of the six-hour bundle are based on a single-center study whose validity has been recently under increasing scrutiny.

Paul E. Marik, of the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk, Va., reviews the validity of the Surviving Sepsis Campaign six-hour bundle and provides a more evidence-based approach to the initial resuscitation of patients with severe sepsis. His work was published in the latest issue of Annals of Intensive Care.

Reference: Marik PE. Surviving sepsis: going beyond the guidelines. Annals of Intensive Care 2011, 1:17 doi:10.1186/2110-5820-1-17