Diagnosing sepsis: does the microbiology matter?

Sepsis is caused by infection, and knowing what type of organism is causing the infection certainly matters in terms of both epidemiology and selecting antibiotic therapy. Although there is considerable laboratory evidence that micro-organisms initiate sepsis in different ways, the clinical consequences are usually indistinguishable. New drugs that target specific points in the activation pathway are starting to emerge, and these will require us to be much more accurate in how we diagnose sepsis.