-
- Ali Pourmand, Tess Whiteside, David Yamane, Amir Rashed, and Maryann Mazer-Amirshahi.
- Department of Emergency Medicine, George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, Washington, DC, United States. Electronic address: pourmand@gwu.edu.
- Am J Emerg Med. 2019 Jul 1; 37 (7): 1353-1361.
BackgroundSeveral clinical trials and literature reviews have been conducted to evaluate the impact of corticosteroids on the physiological markers and clinical outcomes of patients in septic shock. While the findings have been somewhat contradictory, there is evidence of moderate benefit from the administration of low-dose corticosteroids to patients in septic shock. In this review, we discuss recent studies evaluating the impact of corticosteroids on morbidity and mortality in septic shock and explore future directions to fully elucidate when and how the administration of corticosteroid therapies can be beneficial.MethodsA literature review was performed using the Mesh database of PubMed with the term "septic shock" and subheadings "therapeutic use", "drug therapy", "pharmacology", and "therapy" followed by the addition of "steroid". Filters were added to restrict the search to 18+ age, English and human studies, and articles published within the last 10 years. One hundred sixty-five articles were examined and twenty-five were deemed relevant to this review.ResultsThe twenty-five articles reviewed here provide conflicting evidence as to the usefulness of corticosteroid treatments during septic shock. Several showed improved physiological outcomes, including rates of organ failure, need for life supporting interventions, adverse effects, inflammatory markers, and perfusion during the course of septic shock, as well as decreased mortality for a statistically significant number of patients.ConclusionsThere remains a need for improved therapy for patients in septic shock. Corticosteroids have shown some potential in improving mortality rates and clinical markers. Additional studies are needed to determine the optimal role of corticosteroids in septic shock.Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Notes
Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
- Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as
*italics*
,_underline_
or**bold**
. - Superscript can be denoted by
<sup>text</sup>
and subscript<sub>text</sub>
. - Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines
1. 2. 3.
, hyphens-
or asterisks*
. - Links can be included with:
[my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
- Images can be included with:
![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
- For footnotes use
[^1](This is a footnote.)
inline. - Or use an inline reference
[^1]
to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document[^1]: This is a long footnote.
.