Neonatal sepsis remains a major problem in NICUs, as possibly the most commonly diagnosed/suspected and treated illness in NICUs around the world. Being a developing country and with its own limited resources, sepsis-related mortality and morbidity are perhaps the most prevalent in India. We often use a number of “sepsis variant” diagnoses in clinical practice-definite sepsis, probable sepsis, early onset neonatal sepsis, late onset neonatal sepsis, suspect sepsis and even culture negative sepsis!
One drawback of being “over familiar” with sepsis is that many of us tend to attribute each and every symptom and illness to sepsis in some way. We often resort to our own clinical acumen or gut instinct rather than using evidence-based methods to reach such a diagnosis. Many of us are hypocritical in that we take supporting lab investigations at face value only when the results favour our preferred diagnosis. If lab evidence of sepsis/SIRS is lacking, we often fail
