Surgery
-
To assess the relative importance of cardiac versus peripheral vascular failure in patients dying of septic shock, a series of 42 patients with documented septic shock was retrospectively evaluated. Patients were included in the study if serial hemodynamic and metabolic studies had been performed: the first one within 12 hours after onset of septic shock and the last one within 12 hours (median 2 hours; range 0.1 to 12 hours) before death in nonsurvivors. Nonsurvivors were included only if they died in shock. ⋯ The nonsurvivors showed progressive lactic acidemia. Even group IIb patients showed persistent vasodilation despite a decrease in CI. Our data suggest that many patients in septic shock die as a result of peripheral vascular rather than cardiac failure, since persistent vasodilation, irrespective of CI, was a major hemodynamic determinant in nonsurvivors, of whom 57% maintained a high CI until shortly before death.