Systemic Inflammation and Sepsis
Aims and Missions
· To improve quality of care in patients with life-threatening inflammations with and without infections.
· To further experimental and clinical research in this area.
Chair and deputy
Suzanne Toussaint - Germany
Jérôme Pugin - Geneva, Switzerland
Membership
There are currently 191 voting members and 2270 registered members. Please note that only the voting members of the Section may elect the chair and the deputy. Do you wish to be one of the members of this Section or do you wish to change your Section registration? Please email us.
Activities
The activities of the ESICM Section “Systemic Inflammation and Sepsis“(SIS) are dedicated to both experimental research and projects on the clinical management of patients suffering from diseases with inflammatory symptoms. It most commonly arises from bacterial infection but it can also be caused by a variety of other micro-organisms such as viruses and fungi. This clinical response is referred to as the systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS), and it is named “sepsis” when it is considered as a clinical response to infection.
Sepsis is termed severe when it is associated with organ failure, tissue hypo perfusion or hypotension. Sepsis-associated mortality rates still remain unacceptably high, and we believe that we must work together to embrace new strategies in order to improve patient outcomes still further.
The recent improvement in outcomes has been characterized by the successive introduction of multiple interventions and therapies and is an ongoing process. The current wave of clinical trial data relating to a number of new interventions should be viewed in the context of this trend towards ever-improving management of the condition. The results of several large randomized trials published within the last years demonstrated that, beyond the gold standards of addressing the focus and establishing broad spectrum antibiotic therapy as early as possible, there are indeed new options for treating severe sepsis and septic shock, which include early goal directed cardiovascular stabilization, glucose control, and reversal of the procoagulant state.
Sepsis continues to be one of the predominant topics during the Annual Congress of the ESICM every year. Education and training are goals that the ESICM as a whole is devoted to, and so is the SIS section, having established an annual pre-congress postgraduate course on Sepsis which is highly frequented.
The research activities of the SIS section are mostly interactive and have brought about several important publications during the last years. These include therapeutic trials e.g. the CORTICUS study on the use of low-dose hydrocortisone for the treatment of septic shock (Sprung et al : NEJM 358:111-124; 2008) as well as epidemiological surveys such as the SOAP study on the incidence of sepsis and severe sepsis in intensive care units (Vincent JL et al: Critical Care Medicine 34:344-353, 2006). The most recent activities are part of the ECCRN, especially in collaboration with the GenoSept Project, which investigates the predisposing factors – both genetic and environmental – as well as co-morbidities on development and outcome of sepsis. More details can be found in specific sections of this webpage.
Probably the most striking success has been reached by the Surviving Sepsis Campaign (SSC), which was launched in 2002 as an interactive project between ESICM, the Society of Critical Care Medicine (SCCM), and the International Sepsis Forum (ISF). The SIS section is represented in the Steering Committee of the SSC. The SSC concentrates on education and implementation of evidence-based therapies. The SSC Guidelines have first been published in 2004 and have been revised in 2008 (Dellinger et al Crit Care Med 36: 296-327, 2008). They were generated by a team of specialists, and 11 international scientific Societies took part. The SSC has resulted in an overall reduction of hospital mortality in patients with sepsis of 5.4% within two years (Levy et al Crit Care Med 38 (2), 2010).
Members of the SIS section who have a research project that they would like to discuss, be it clinical, interventional or observational, are called to get into contact with Jérôme Pugin.
Meetings agenda and minutes
The next meeting will be held in Brussels during the 30th ISICEM Congress 9-12 March 2010. Details about dates and locations will be communicated as soon as available.
Minutes from the last section meeting in October.
SIS Programme 2010
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