The Surviving Sepsis Campaign (SSC) guidelines, released in 2017, are a combination of expert opinion and evidence-based medicine, adopted by many institutions as a standard of practice. The aim was to analyse the quality of evidence supporting recommendations on the management of sepsis.

The strength and quality of evidence (high, moderate, low-very low and best practice statements) of each recommendation were extracted. Randomised controlled trials were required to qualify as high-quality evidence.

A total of 96 recommendations were formulated, and 87 were included. Among thirty-one (43%) strong recommendations, only 15.2% were supported by high-quality evidence. Overall, thirty-seven (42.5%) recommendations were based on low-quality evidence, followed by 28 (32.2%) based on moderate-quality, 15 (17.2%) were best practice statements and only seven (8.0%) were supported by high-quality evidence. Randomised controlled trials supported 21.4%, 9.5% and 8.6% recommendations on mechanical ventilation, resuscitation, and management/adjuvant therapy, respectively. In contrast, none high-quality evidence recommendation supported antimicrobial/source control (82.4% were low-very low evidence or best practice statements), and nutrition.

In the SSC guidelines most recommendations were informed by indirect evidence and non-systematic observations. While awaiting trials results, Delphi-like approaches or multi-criteria decision analyses should guide recommendations.