Definition
In humans, septic shock has a specific definition requiring several conditions to be met for diagnosis:
- First, SIRS (systemic inflammatory response syndrome) must be diagnosed by finding at least any two of the following:
- Tachypnea (high respiratory rate) > 20 breaths per minute, or on blood gas, a PCO2 less than 32 mmHg signifying hyperventilation.
- White blood cell count either significantly low, < 4000 cells/mm³ or elevated > 12000 cells/mm³.
- Heart rate > 90 beats per minute
- Temperature: Fever > 38.5 °C (101.3 °F) or hypothermia < 35.0 °C (95.0 °F)
- Second, there must be sepsis and not an alternative form cause of SIRS. Sepsis requires evidence of infection, which may include positive blood culture, signs of pneumonia on chest x-ray, or other radiologic or laboratory evidence of infection.
- Third, signs of end-organ dysfunction are required such as renal failure, liver dysfunction, changes in mental status, or elevated serum lactate.
- Finally, septic shock is diagnosed if there is refractory hypotension (low blood pressure that does not respond to treatment). This signifies that intravenous fluid administration alone is insufficient to maintain a patient's blood pressure from becoming hypotensive.
Read more about this topic: Septic Shock
Famous quotes containing the word definition:
“Was man made stupid to see his own stupidity?
Is God by definition indifferent, beyond us all?
Is the eternal truth man’s fighting soul
Wherein the Beast ravens in its own avidity?”
—Richard Eberhart (b. 1904)
“Mothers often are too easily intimidated by their children’s negative reactions...When the child cries or is unhappy, the mother reads this as meaning that she is a failure. This is why it is so important for a mother to know...that the process of growing up involves by definition things that her child is not going to like. Her job is not to create a bed of roses, but to help him learn how to pick his way through the thorns.”
—Elaine Heffner (20th century)
“Beauty, like all other qualities presented to human experience, is relative; and the definition of it becomes unmeaning and useless in proportion to its abstractness. To define beauty not in the most abstract, but in the most concrete terms possible, not to find a universal formula for it, but the formula which expresses most adequately this or that special manifestation of it, is the aim of the true student of aesthetics.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)