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To investigate age-related differences in outcomes of critically ill patients with sepsis around the world.

We performed a secondary analysis of data from the prospective ICON audit, in which all adult (>16 years) patients admitted to participating ICUs between May 8 and 18, 2012, were included, except admissions for routine postoperative observation. For this sub-analysis, the 10,012 patients with completed age data were included. They were divided into five age groups – ≤50, 51–60, 61–70, 71–80, >80 years. Sepsis was defined as infection plus at least one organ failure.

A total of 2963 patients had sepsis, with similar proportions across the age groups (≤50 = 25.2%; 51–60 = 30.3%; 61–70 = 32.8%; 71–80 = 30.7%; >80 = 30.9%). Hospital mortality increased with age and in patients >80 years was almost twice that of patients ≤50 years (49.3% vs 25.2%, p < .05). The …