[Current trends in sepsis diagnosis - from classic culture to advanced molecular identification]

Sepsis is a critical condition characterized by life-threatening organ dysfunction caused by a dysregulated host response to infection, where each hour of delay in initiating adequate therapy increases mortality by 7-10%. This paper summarizes current trends in microbiological diagnostics, moving from the gold standard of blood culture toward advanced molecular identification. The traditional culture-based process is limited by a time lag of 12-48 hours. Modern approaches include accelerating identification from positive blood cultures using MALDI-TOF MS and RAST methods, which reduce the time to targeted treatment. Significant innovation is represented by culture-independent technologies such as T2MR, SepsiTest-UMD, Cube Dx, and InfectID-BSI, enabling pathogen detection directly from whole blood within a few hours. The future of sepsis diagnosis is further enhanced by digital PCR for absolute quantification of bacterial load, metagenomic sequencing (mNGS) for identifying unexpected pathogens, and transcriptomics for assessing the host immune response. Integrating these technologies with artificial intelligence (AI) predictive models paves the way for precision medicine and personalized care for septic patients. Keywords: sepsis, blood culture, molecular diagnostics, PCR, mNGS, MALDI-TOF MS, artificial intelligence.