LAUSR

The incidence of severe sepsis (sepsis with organ dysfunction) is increasing [1]. Several recent published studies have demonstrated decreased mortality and morbidity as a result of interventions and therapeutics applied to patients with sepsis [2-5]. These new data, resulting from rigorously performed, randomized controlled trials, combined with previous data for beneficial interventions not specific to sepsis management [6-10], such as DVT and stress ulcer prophylaxis, lend significant weight to the belief that critical care clinicians can now significantly reduce mortality in patients with severe sepsis and septic shock. Protocolized care now exists for a heart attack or a stroke, which is based on recent advances as demonstrated by the medical literature. Up to now there has been no attempt to reproduce such an approach in severe sepsis. The Surviving Sepsis Campaign hopes to change that. The Surviving Sepsis Campaign is administered by the Society of Critical Care Medicine (SCCM), the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine (ESICM), and the International Sepsis Forum (ISF), and is open to be funded by unrestricted educational grants from industry. Thus far Baxter Bioscience, Edwards Lifesciences, and Eli Lilly and Company have provided funding. The campaign, initiated in 2002, is comprised of three phases. The first phase was the introduction of the campaign at several major international critical care medicine conferences, beginning with the ESICM meeting in Barcelona in 2002, and followed by the Society of Critical Care Medicine meeting in 2003. The overall goal of the campaign is to increase clinician and public awareness of the incidence of sepsis, severe sepsis, and septic shock, to develop guidelines for the management of severe sepsis, and to foster a change in the standard of care in sepsis management. Phase 2 of the campaign was aimed at producing guidelines for the management of sepsis. In 2003, critical care and infectious disease experts representing 11 The Surviving sepsis campaign