Personalizing Sepsis Care

Sepsis describes a broad-based syndrome covering many infectious agents, affecting various sites in patients of differing age, gender, and comorbidity and resulting in varying degrees and combinations of organ dysfunction. Protocolized care with rigid goals may suit populations, assuming the evidence-lite recommendations are beneficial, but not necessarily individual patients. A personalized approach to management is rational and preferable. Other than clinical heterogeneity, a range of biological signatures exist in sepsis, and these fluctuate over the disease course. Subsets of septic patients can display distinct biological signatures that may potentially be used to identify suitability for different treatments and titration to optimal effect.