Critical Care

official impact factor 4.60

Letter

Latent viral infections in critically ill patients

Matt P Wise1*, Paul J Frost1, Chris D Hingston1 and Andrew J Godkin2

Author Affiliations

1 Adult Critical Care, University Hospital of Wales, Cardiff CF14 4XW, UK

2 School of Medicine, Cardiff University, Cardiff CF14 4XN, UK

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Critical Care 2009, 13:410 doi:10.1186/cc7902

Published: 17 June 2009

First paragraph (this article has no abstract)

A key message of Osawa and Singh's review of cytomegalovirus infection in critically ill patients is that the infection occurred in 25% of patients and was associated with worse outcome [1]. Emphasis was placed on the lack of proof of causality between infection and outcome, and reactivation may reflect illness severity.