Presence of infection in patients with presumed sepsis at the time of ICU admission

A clinical suspicion of infection is mandatory for diagnosing sepsis in patients with a systemic inflammatory response syndrome. Yet the accuracy of categorizing critically ill patients presenting to the ICU as being infected or not is unknown. We therefore assessed the likelihood of infection in patients who were treated for sepsis upon admission to the ICU, and quantified the association between plausibility of infection and mortality.