Hiba Hammad Altaq

1. Introduction and Historical Perspective The word sepsis comes from the Greek word “σήψις,” meaning decomposition or decay. Its first documented use was over 2700 years ago when it appeared in Homer’s poems and was later utilized in the work of Hippocrates and Galen []. When the “Germ theory” of disease was developed in the 1800s, there was some recognition that sepsis is caused by dangerous micro-organisms.

1. Introduction During the 1918–1919 influenza pandemic, a few documented causes of death were “purulent bronchitis”, “fulminating pneumonia”, and “lungs full of hemorrhages” [1,2]. Similarly, in the years leading up to that, patients had succumbed to “wet lung” and “shock lung”, and documentation such as this would have occurred until the 1960s [3]. Today, we would report these causes of death as acute respiratory distress syndrome, or “ARDS”.

4. Discussion Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths annually in the United States, which might be related to patients being diagnosed at advanced stages [19]. The National Lung Screening Trial showed that low-dose CT chest screening in high-risk individuals increased earlier-stage detection [1,20].