Sepsis: new strategies for management

Two chapters review general issues associated with antibiotic therapy in patients with severe sepsis. One chapter covers optimal antibiotic use in patients with severe community-acquired pneumonia. The second chapter deals with important, and often neglected, pharmacodynamic considerations in relation to antibiotic use in patients with severe sepsis and septic shock, providing a comprehensive review of applied pharmacology, detailing the antibiotics most commonly used and practical issues related to their indication and dosage adjustment in patients with severe sepsis. Specific therapies are also discussed in separate chapters, including the use of macrolides in community-acquired pneumonia, the use of statins in severe sepsis, the use of corticoids in severe pneumonia, and the nonspecific removal of sepsis mediators through blood-purification approaches.Although the individual chapters tackle their topics comprehensively and there are some useful summary tables and illustrations, the book as a whole does not present an exhaustive review of all of the new strategies for management of sepsis. Some important issues related to the management of sepsis have also been overlooked by the editors or have come to the fore since the book was published, including recent arguments about the safety of colloids and tight glycaemic control in patients with severe sepsis and the role of biomarker-guided antibiotic therapy. It may also have been useful in this context to discuss the recent debates about the use of activated protein C, selenium supplementation, and adherence to guidelines in severe sepsis. These issues are of greater interest to clinicians than hypothetical therapies, which may be of more interest to researchers. In addition, several chapters in this book are specifically dedicated to pneumonia (four chapters out of eight), especially community-acquired pneumonia, and may not be relevant to other forms of sepsis.Who is the book intended for? Intensivists with special