Angus (Pittsburgh, PA, USA) presented his group's work on the epidemiology of sepsis in the USA (accepted for publication in Critical Care Medicine). They developed a method for identifying hospitalized patients with sepsis based on ICD9 criteria, the most widely recorded coding system used in US hospitals. Prospective testing of the method found it to be both sensitive and reliable. They then applied it to a representative selection of US hospitals. Their results indicated that about 50% of intensive care unit (ICU) patients have systemic inflammatory response syndrome, and that approximately 20% of these progress to severe sepsis. Mortality for severe sepsis was greater than 30%. Demographically, those at the extremes of age represent the most at-risk groups, in whom the mortality is also the highest. These data provides yet another reminder that the increasing demands on health care resources caused by the ageing population is predicted to exceed intensive care provision within the next The 21st International Symposium on Intensive Care and  Emergency Medicine, Brussels, Belgium, 20-23 March 2001 10-20 years. Finally, those investigators found a striking demographic peak in patients aged 20-30 years, which they attributed largely to human immunodeficiency virus.