Recommendations of the GT-LATINFURG for the identification and initial management of patients with severe infection and sepsis in emergency departments

In November 2021, the Surviving Sepsis Campaign (SSC) published an update to its 2016 guidelines and recommendations. Subsequently, during the CIMU 2022 (33rd World Congress on Emergency Medicine, held in March 2022 in Guadalajara, Mexico), the 2021 SSC Guidelines were reviewed and analyzed from the perspective of emergency physicians (EPs). The experts involved in this task also reached consensus and published several key points of greatest interest and concern to EPs regarding the management of patients with severe infection or sepsis in hospital emergency departments (EDs). These points included several improvement proposals developed by GTLATINFURG (Latin American Working Group for Improving Infection Care in Emergency Departments) and formally presented in what became known as the "Guadalajara Declaration." That document outlined complementary or alternative considerations to the 2021 SSC Guidelines. The first proposal was to "develop guidelines aimed at detecting, preventing progression, and managing patients with severe infection and sepsis in EDs." Since then-and owing to numerous original research studies and review articles published by the GT-LATINFURG and INFURG-SEMES groups (Infection Study Group of the Spanish Society of Emergency Medicine)-we can now claim that there is scientific evidence generated in EDs themselves, or at least that existing evidence has been reviewed while considering the specific role of EPs. The main aim of this consensus document, as the initial presentation of the first proposal of the Guadalajara Declaration, is to analyze-based on routine clinical practice, experience, available evidence, and the perspective of ED physicians-several key issues and controversies in order to establish recommendations through expert consensus grounded in current scientific evidence.