BMRI BioMed Research International 2314-6141 2314-6133 Hindawi Publishing Corporation 10.1155/2015/424308 424308 Review Article Is It Time to Beta Block the Septic Patient? Pemberton Philip pembo@doctors.org.uk 1 Veenith Tonny tonny.veneeth@uhb.nhs.uk 1, 2, 3 Snelson Catherine catherine.snelson@uhb.nhs.uk 1 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4387-3421 Whitehouse Tony tony.whitehouse@uhb.nhs.uk 1, 4 Papathanassoglou Elizabeth 1 Department of Anaesthesia and Critical Care Medicine University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham Mindelsohn Way, Birmingham B15 2GW UK nhs.uk 2 Department of Infection and Inflammation University of Birmingham Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT UK birmingham.ac.uk 3 Department of Medicine University of Cambridge The Old Schools, Trinity Lane, Cambridge CB2 1TN UK cam.ac.uk 4 College of Medical and Dental Sciences University of Birmingham Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT UK birmingham.ac.uk 2015 18 10 2015 2015 13 03 2015 18 05 2015 18 10 2015 2015 Copyright © 2015 Philip Pemberton et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Beta blockers are some of the most studied drugs in the pharmacopoeia. They are already widely used in medicine for treating hypertension, chronic heart failure, tachyarrhythmias, and tremor. Whilst their use in the immediate perioperative patient has been questioned, the use of esmolol in the patients with established septic shock has been recently reported to have favourable outcomes. In this paper, we review the role of the adrenergic system in sepsis and the evidence for the use of beta stimulation and beta blockers from animal models to critically ill patients.