Despite recent advances in critical care sepsis affects more than 750,000 patients and accounts for 215,000 deaths in the USA alone each year, at a cost of more than $16 billion (Picard et al., 2006).
In addition, patients with severe sepsis are using 45% of all intensive care unit (ICU) bed days and 33% of all the hospital bed days (Padkin
et al., 2003).