Measures, markers, and mediators: Toward a staging system for clinical sepsis. A Report of the Fifth Toronto Sepsis Roundtable, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, October 25–26, 2000

BACKGROUND: Sepsis is not a single disease but a complex and heterogeneous process. Its expression is variable, and its severity is influenced by the nature of the infection, the genetic background of the patient, the time to clinical intervention, the supportive care provided by the clinician, and a number of factors as yet unknown. The evaluation of effective therapies has been hampered by limitations in our ability to characterize the …