What is sepsis and why is sepsis awareness in the general public and healthcare staff critically important? In this podcast, we talk to Jean-Louis Vincent, Editor-in-Chief of Critical Care, about this and more. Listen to find out more!Sepsis is a serious medical condition characterized by a whole-body inflammatory response that occurs due to an infection. It is the primary cause of death from infection, being lethal in over one third of patients in hospital care.“It’s not a particular disease of a particular group of patients,” according to Jean-Louis Vincent. He points out that even healthy individuals can develop sepsis in response to infections such as pneumonia.What’s key is treating and reversing the effects of sepsis is time. “We cannot lose any minute, time counts,” says Jean-Louis Vincent. Patients who have developed sepsis, or are at risk, need to be seen and treated immediately.An obstacle to treatment is awareness of the condition and its symptoms – both within the general public and healthcare staff.In this podcast we talk to Jean-Louis Vincent about what sepsis is, why awareness of sepsis is important and how the research into new treatments is progressing.Short blog: http://blogs.biomedcentral.com/on-medicine/?p=32093Visit Critical Care: http://ccforum.biomedcentral.com/Image on SoundCloud shows Morganella morganii, which can give rise to sepsis, grown on a blood agar plate, (c) Pete Seidel/CDC 2010.