"Sepsis--It ain't so much what you don't know that gets you into trouble, it's what you know for sure that just ain't so."--with apologies to Mark Twain.

The author expresses his views on persistent organ failure as the most common presentation of septic patients prior to death in the intensive care unit (ICU), in relation to a study published in a 2011 issue of the journal "Critical Care Medicine." He describes sepsis as a problem child of medicine. He also talks about the increase in the occurrence of sepsis-related deaths.