Sepsis and organ dysfunction: a new approach in children.

Abstract

In opposition of years ago, when the knowledge of the physiopathologic mechanisms and of the host answer to sepsis in children were only the extrapolation of what happened in adults, there are elements, nowadays, that allow the understanding of the proper answers of the children, taking into account their distinguishing particularities. There have been done important attempts to unify concepts and ideas for arriving to a definition of sepsis and organ dysfunction. An important step was the publication of the guides for the hemodynamic support of the newborn infants and the child in septic shock in Critical Care Medicine 2005 by Joseph A. Carcillo and the Task Force Committee members. More recently, in the Pediatric Critical Care Medicine 2005, Vol. 6, No. 1 appered the work of Brahm Goldstein et al, Definition for sepsis and organ dysfunction in pediatrics. These works have modified the criteria of the Syndrome of the Systemic Inflammation Answer for pediatric population, what brings as a result a uniformity of criteria and allows more quality in the clinical studies and, at the end, an improvement of the final prognosis.