Among the 89 critically-ill adult patients studied, approximately one third were female. The mean patient age in our sample was 46 years (range 18–89 years). The mean admission acute
physiology and chronic health evaluation (APACHE) II score was
12.71 ± 4.97 and the mean admission sequential organ failure assessment (SOFA) score was 5.66 ± 2.61. The overall ICU mortality rate amongst our enrolled patients was 6.74%. About 81% of the
patients met SIRS criteria at ICU admission. Sepsis subsequently developed in approximately half of the patients (50.56%). In the sepsis-positive group, 28.88% of the patients also developed septic
shock. Demographics, illness severity scores at ICU admission and important outcomes of the two patient groups are summarized in Table 1. Approximately half of the sample consisted of trauma
patients, while the other half carried medical and surgical diagnoses (Table 2). All 45 patients who developed sepsis had positive biological fluid cultures, with ten out of forty-five having positive
blood cultures. Table 3 shows the complete list of the infectious microorganisms and the detection source.