Dear SIRS: Your Septic System Stinks

I perused with interest the April 2nd JAMA article on the temporal improvement in severe sepsis outcomes in Australia and New Zealand (ANZ) by Kaukonen et al this week.  Epidemiological studies like this remind me why I'm so fond of reading reports of RCTs:  because they're so much easier to think about.  Epidemiological studies have so many variables, measured and unmeasured, and so much confounding you have to consider. I spent at least five hours poring over the ANZ report, and then comparing it to the recent NEJM article about improved diabetes complications between 1990 and 2010, which is similar, but a bit more convincing (perhaps the reason it's in the NEJM).

I was delighted that the authors of the ANZ study twice referenced our delta inflation article and that the editorialists agree with the letter I wrote to AJRCCM last year advocating composite morbidity outcomes in trials of critical illness.  These issues dovetail - we have a consistent track record of failure to demonstrate mortality improvements in critical care, while we turn a blind eye to other outcomes which may be more tractable and which are often of paramount concern to patients.