Medicine is an ancient discipline, but the capacity to avert otherwise certain death is recent. Intravenous fluid therapy was first used in London during the cholera epidemic of 1832; refinements…
Selective decontamination of the digestive tract (SDD) refers to the administration of prophylactic antibiotics to critically ill patients in the hopes of either preventing or treating airway or digestive tract…
Incidence Annually in the United States alone, more than 5 million central venous catheters (CVCs) are inserted, and patients are exposed to more than 15 million catheter days in the…
What Are Bundles? The development and publication of guidelines seldom lead to changes in clinical behavior, and guidelines are rarely integrated into bedside practice in a timely fashion. Bundles are…
Sepsis, defined as some degree of associated organ dysfunction attributed to a dysregulated host response in association with severe infection, remains a common condition affecting 1% to 11% of hospitalized…
How Can We Monitor the Microcirculation in Sepsis? Altered Microcirculation in Sepsis Sepsis is a clinical condition associated with high morbidity and mortality worldwide, and its management represents a challenge…
This chapter briefly summarizes the hemodynamic derangement associated with sepsis and then sequentially evaluates the various vasopressor agents that have been investigated and are in current use for the treatment…
Acknowledgments F.B. was supported by a grant from the University Hospital of Angers. Septic shock is defined by a complex association of cardiovascular dysfunction: decreased systemic vascular resistance, hypovolemia, impaired…
The annual prevalence of sepsis, the systemic inflammatory response to infection, is estimated at 19 million cases worldwide. Over the last 30 years, reported mortality rates in severe sepsis, defined…
In his seminal 1876 work defining germ theory, Dr. Robert Koch described experiments in which he established the causative role of infecting microorganisms in septic shock. Infection was accepted as…
