Epidemiology of intra-abdominal infection and sepsis in critically ill patients: "AbSeS", a multinational observational cohort study and ESICM Trials Group Project.

Purpose To describe the epidemiology of intra-abdominal infection in an international cohort of ICU patients according to a new system that classifies cases according to setting of infection acquisition (community-acquired, early onset hospital-acquired, and late-onset hospital-acquired), anatomical disruption (absent or present with localized or diffuse peritonitis), and severity of disease expression (infection, sepsis, and septic shock).