Tom van der Poll : Sepsis Phenotypes
Sepsis is defined as a life-threatening organ dysfunction caused by a dysregulated host response to an infection. This definition fails to grasp the heterogeneous nature and the underlying dynamic pathophysiology of the syndrome. In response to this heterogeneity, efforts have been made to stratify sepsis patients into distinct phenotypes, either based on their clinical presentation or pathophysiological characteristics. Subtyping of sepsis patients introduces the possibility of the implementation of personalized medicine, whereby each patient receives treatment tailored to their individual disease manifestation. This lecture explores sepsis subtypes described thus far, as well as the treatments that have been researched in this context.
Tom van der Poll is Professor of Medicine & Chair of the Department of Medicine at the Amsterdam University Medical Center (The Netherlands). He is board certified in Internal Medicine and Infectious Diseases. His research focuses on pneumonia and sepsis, particularly on pathogenesis, the host response, immunotherapy and biomarkers. He published >1000 articles on this topic. He is the former chair of the International Sepsis Forum, and was a member of international committee that established the new sepsis definitions (JAMA 2016). He was elected as member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2019 and as member of Academia Europaea in 2023.