Table 1.

“PICOS” approach for selecting clinical studies in the systematic search

PICOS	Characteristics of clinical studies included for the qualitative synthesis and meta-analysis
1. Participants	Adult patients with severe sepsis and/or septic shock
2. Intervention	Strain echocardiographic assessment with TTE, conducted within the first 48 h from diagnosis
3. Comparison	Primary: comparison of GLS values between survivors and non-survivors Secondary: comparison of LVEF between survivors and non-survivors (only studies providing GLS) Sensitivity: leave-one-out-at-a-time, excluding studies with high risk of bias, including studies performing TTE within 1 week; including retrospective and case-control studies
4. Outcomes	Mortality (at longest follow-up available)
5. Study design	Prospective clinical studies

PICOS patient, population or problem, intervention, comparison, outcomes and study design (or setting), GLS global longitudinal strain, LVEF left ventricular ejection fraction, TTE trans-thoracic echocardiography