Sepsis and its related syndromes represent potentially devastating illnesses, estimated to account for 1% of all hospital admissions and for 100 000 deaths per annum in the U.S.A. alone. Although sepsis is defined as the systemic response to infection, an infective organism is found in fewer than 50% of cases. It is therefore increasingly recognised that sepsis represents only one example of a ...

Multiple organ dysfunction syndrome (MODS) is a systemic, dysfunctional inflammatory response that requires long intensive care unit (ICU) stay. It is characterized with high mortality rate depending on the number of organs involved. It has been recognized that organ failure does not occur as an all-or-none rule, but rather a range of organ dysfunction exists resulting in clinical organ failure...

Multiple organ failure is the commonest cause of death in the intensive care unit setting. There are numerous precipitating factors including sepsis, trauma and pancreatitis. The resulting tissue hypoxia, exaggerated inflammatory response and generation of free oxygen radicals leads to tissue damage and organ dysfunction. No definitive treatment exists despite considerable efforts to find a 'ma...

We thank Dr. Barie and his colleagues for their interest in our data.1 It is satisfying to note that other investigators also have had a similar experience regarding the influence of nonpulmonary organ dysfunction and failure on outcome in patients with respiratory failure. Contrary to our findings, they have reported2 that hepatic dysfunction had a significant influence of patient mortality in...

Moebius syndrome is a rare nonprogressive congenital neurological disorder with a wide range of severity and variability of symptoms. This diversity is a consequence of dysfunction of different cranial nerves (most often facial and abducens nerves), accompanying orofacial abnormalities, musculoskeletal malformations, congenital cardiac diseases, as well as specific associations of Moebius and o...

BACKGROUND Resuscitation after cardiac arrest (CA) with a whole-body ischemia-reperfusion injury causes brain injury and multiple organ dysfunction (MODS). This study aimed to determine whether mild systemic hypothermia could decrease multiple organ dysfunctions after resuscitation from cardiac arrest. METHODS The patients who had been resuscitated after cardiac arrest were reviewed. During t...

Approximately 40 trillion bacteria reside inside the human intestine, meaning there are at least as many cells of microbial origin as human origin [1]. While it was once believed that bacteria and humans simply coexisted in the same space, a wide body of evidence now suggests that host–microbial communication is more complex than ever imagined and the microbiome plays a critical role in maintai...