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Empiric Antimicrobial Therapy in Severe Sepsis and Septic Shock: Optimizing Pathogen Clearance

  • Sepsis and ICU (L Napolitano, Section Editor)
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Abstract

Mortality and morbidity in severe sepsis and septic shock remain high despite significant advances in critical care. Efforts to improve outcome in septic conditions have focused on targeted, quantitative resuscitation strategies utilizing intravenous fluids, vasopressors, inotropes, and blood transfusions to correct disease-associated circulatory dysfunction driven by immune-mediated systemic inflammation. This review explores an alternate paradigm of septic shock in which microbial burden is identified as the key driver of mortality and progression to irreversible shock. We propose that clinical outcomes in severe sepsis and septic shock hinge upon the optimized selection, dosing, and delivery of highly potent antimicrobial therapy.

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Conflict of Interest

Stephen Liang is the recipient of a KM1 Comparative Effectiveness Research Career Development Award (KM1CA156708-01) and received support through the Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) program (UL1RR024992) of the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) as well as the Barnes-Jewish Patient Safety and Quality Career Development Program, which is funded by the Foundation for Barnes-Jewish Hospital. Anand Kumar holds investigator-initiated research grants for the study of septic shock from Astellas and Pfizer. He also holds additional unrelated research grants from GSK and Roche.

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This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by the author.

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  1. Division of Infectious Diseases, Division of Emergency Medicine, Washington University School of Medicine, 660 S. Euclid Avenue, Campus Box 8051, St. Louis, MO, 63110, USA

    Stephen Y. Liang

  2. Section of Critical Care Medicine, Section of Infectious Diseases, JJ399d, Health Sciences Centre, 700 William Street, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, R3A-1R9

    Anand Kumar

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Correspondence to Anand Kumar.

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This article is part of the Topical Collection on Sepsis and ICU

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Liang, S.Y., Kumar, A. Empiric Antimicrobial Therapy in Severe Sepsis and Septic Shock: Optimizing Pathogen Clearance. Curr Infect Dis Rep 17, 36 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11908-015-0493-6

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