Table 3. Patients’ outcomes and possible impact on management.

Test results	Presumed influence on patient-important outcomes	Directness of evidence for outcomes important to patients
True positives	Early use of resuscitation bundle to reduce mortality from 37% to 30%	Some uncertainty
True negatives	Less patients’ anxiety, and cost for further testing	Major uncertainty
False positives	Unnecessary resuscitation, cost, anxiety, antibiotic exposure	Some uncertainty
False negatives	Delayed resuscitation, possible adverse outcomes	Major uncertainty
Balance between presumed outcomes, test compliance and cost	New biomarkers with high accuracy may warrant their use in early recognition of sepsis and septic shock