Evaluation of sepsis in a critically ill surgical population.

We report a new clinical rating system which assesses septic patients' ongoing disease course and its severity. Our system incorporates the Therapeutic Intervention Scoring System (TISS) and Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation to measure discrete organ system abnormalities, plus a multiple system organ failure scale to quantify the number of abnormal organ systems. The resulting score, which reflects the severity of multiple organ dysfunction and grades responsiveness to therapy, was validated against the actual disease course. Retrospective and prospective profiles of individual surgical ICU patients demonstrated that this tracking method was a more effective indicator of severity of sepsis and more sensitive to the day-to-day changes in clinical status than either the TISS or APACHE II components alone. We also demonstrate that a graphic illustration of daily system scores yields clinically useful information relevant to the patients' septic course.