Early recognition and resuscitation of patients in septic shock are critical skills for an emergency medicine physician.

Many clinical decision-making tools have been developed and validated in their use to identify and define those who are in sepsis or septic shock, as well as predict a patient’s overall risk of morbidity and mortality, including tools like the SIRS criteria and SOFA score.

Further research on this topic should be considered in order to offer truly practice-changing evidence.

However, the question asked by the researchers is one that has the potential to have a major clinical impact.

The diastolic shock index is something that can be calculated less than 30 seconds after the patient enters the resuscitation bay.

As such, it does not rely on various laboratory values in order to create a clinically beneficial prediction tool.

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