At present, providers use criteria such as the Systemic Inflammatory Response Syndrome (SIRS) criteria and the Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (SOFA) to rapidly assess patients for early and possibly severe signs of sepsis, including organ failure.
These guidelines, although practical, cannot distinguish a cause for the patient's symptoms. Testing a patient's blood sample, as with blood cultures, can and often does provide a cause, although the turn-around time for culture results is usually prohibitive. Rapid testing is needed. Although not approved as definitive diagnostic testing tools, specific biomarkers are helpful in combination with patient symptomology and other laboratory test results in helping to diagnose sepsis and its cause.
