Sepsis is a potentially life-threatening systemic inflammatory response in the presence of infection, most commonly due to bacterial infection. It occurs predominantly among vulnerable patients, such as elderly, immunocompromised or patients with multiple comorbidities. Pulmonary, gastrointestinal, genitourinary, and primary bloodstream infections account for the majority of infectious sources in septic patients. The term „systemic inflammatory response“ (SIRS) is used in cases of an evident systemic response in the absence of infection. Severe sepsis is sepsis with dysfunction of a least one organ, and septic shock is defined as severe sepsis with hypotension. With rising hospitalization rates sepsis clearly became a problem and has up to this time been underestimated by the global health community. A sepsis campaign was founded by the non-profit organization Global Sepsis Alliance to increase public and professional awareness of sepsis. A higher incidence is particularly due to more resistant bacteria, demographic shifting and more surgical procedures amongst others. On the 2nd October 2002 in Barcelona, intensive care professionals from around the globe joined to reduce the number of deaths from sepsis. Since then unfortunately the Global Burden of Disease Report (GBDR) and the WHO website still only list “maternal sepsis” and “sepsis in new-borns”, despite the effort of the surviving sepsis campaign. This may partly explain why most non-professionals, journalists and politicians do not know the term “sepsis”. Successful early diagnosis and treatment remains difficult and is one of the key features of reducing sepsis incidence. In the pathogenesis of sepsis a central mediator does not seem to exist, although TNFα has been commonly proposed for this role. Diagnosing sepsis includes two or more of these conditions: temperature > 38 ° C or < 36 °, heart rate > 90 beats/min, respiratory rate > 20 breaths/min or PaCO2 < 32 torr (< 4.3 kPa), and WBC > 12 000 cells/mm3 or < 10% immature forms. Complications of sepsis include end-organ dysfunctions also called multiple organ dysfunction syndrome (MODS). The treatment of sepsis requires immediate intravenous antibiotics. The initial empiric anti-infective therapy should include one or two drugs against all possible pathogens, most commonly gram positive bacteria.