The major clinical presentations seen by critical care physicians are sepsis and acute
respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), both of which are heterogeneous clinical syndromes
rather than specific diagnoses. The current diagnostic criteria provide little insight
into the mechanisms underlying these heterogeneous syndromes and minimal progress
has been made with regard to the development of therapies, despite many large randomized
controlled trials being undertaken. This review outlines the advances made in improved
characterization of critically-ill patients, using ARDS as an exemplar, and highlights
the need for this improved patient characterization to be coupled with mechanistic
science to develop therapies that target specific pathomechanisms.
Keywords
acute respiratory distress syndrome - sepsis - phenotype - endotype - biomarker -
transcriptome