Deriving a Consensus Definition for Sepsis in Small Animals

Following the 2016 redefinition of sepsis in human medicine, it is increasingly apparent that veterinarymedicine must consider to best identify sepsis clinically in small animals and how to define the syndromefrom a research perspective. A core group of 12 Emergency and Critical Care specialists are presentlyundertaking a collaborative effort to better codify sepsis in small animals. We aspire to generate clinicallyuseful definitions that will also help us to perform more rigorous, better standardized and more comparableresearch moving forward. This will be accomplished by systematically reviewing the existing literature to aidthe development of consensus definitions of sepsis and septic shock. We intend to evaluate the performanceand utility of this consensus definition through retrospective record review at our various institutions and todevelop and launch a means to gather an array of data on potentially septic animals prospectively and on amulticenter basis. This session will provide an update on these efforts.