A new definition of sepsis. Sepsis is an infection that has entered the bloodstream. It can be very dangerous. The new definition has led to a considerable debate. How and when should it be integrated into clinical practice? Doctors would like to greatly improve the treatment of sepsis and septic shock. Our newspapers write little about sepsis, but for example in Germany, about 150 thousand patients have a sepsis each year, and about 75 thousand patients die from sepsis each year. Sepsis and septic shock: the new definitions in the document “Sepsis-3,” i.e. SOFA and Quick SOFA: everybody assumes that they actually are the better definitions. But there is no hard data that actually show that they really are the better definitions. A well-known professor sums up, the new definitions most probably will be applied immediately in new clinical studies and new epidemiological studies. But the new definitions most probably will not be adopted into routine clinical practice until almost all doctors are convinced that these new definitions really lead to an earlier recognition of sepsis and save more lives.