Pitt doctors lead an international task force to redefine sepsis

Doctors at UPMC and the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine are at the forefront of an international task force to rewrite the clinical rule book on a top patient killer in hospitals. Sepsis is the killer in question. It's a condition that occurs when the body's response to an infection causes more harm than good. Sepsis occurs in up to 2 million U.S. patients yearly, and about 10 percent of those patients die. An international task force published articles in the Journal of the American Medical Association that updated definitions for sepsis and septic shock. Those definitions were last updated 15 years ago.