Sepsis and septic shock and the delayed multi-organ dysfunction syndrome continue to be the major determinants for adverse outcome in critically ill patients, even though substantial advances in the field of supportive therapy could be identified recently. This development was paralleled by a surge in the knowledge and understanding of the underlying immunological regulatory and counter-regulatory responses. The essence of these data resulted in new insights indicating strongly that MODS is the clinical expression of profoundly dysregulated immunological pathways. As a consequence, intensive care nowadays increasingly has to focus on the pathomechanisms and pathophysiology of MODS, taking into account the innate immune response, its means of diagnosis and its molecular (patho)biology.
This book contains the major part of the program of the Third International Symposium on "Sepsis, SIRS, Immune Response". The aim of this conference was to gather an international and multidisciplinary panel of clinical and basic experts to discuss and review recent progress in the field of intensive care with special emphasis on inflammation, sepsis and the complex immunological interactions between subsystems of the innate immune response, which up to now have been somewhat underrecognised by the intensive care community.