1. Ferrer R, Artigas A, Suarez D, et al. Edusepsis Study Group. Effectiveness of treatments for severe sepsis: a prospective, multicenter, observational study. Am J Respir Crit Care Med 2009;180:861–866.

2. Kalil AC, Johnson DW, Lisco SJ, Sun J. Early goal-directed therapy for sepsis: a novel solution for discordant survival outcomes in clinical trials. Crit Care Med 2017;45:607–614.

3. Seymour CW, Gesten F, Prescott HC, et al. Time to treatment and mortality during mandated emergency care for sepsis. N Engl J Med 2017;376:2235–2244.

4. Rhodes A, Evans LE, Alhazzani W, et al. Surviving sepsis campaign: international guidelines for management of sepsis and septic shock: 2016. Intensive Care Med 2017;43:304–377.

5. Kumar A, Roberts D, Wood KE, et al. Duration of hypotension before initiation of effective antimicrobial therapy is the critical determinant of survival in human septic shock. Crit Care Med 2006;34:1589–1596.

6. Taylor SP, Anderson WE, Beam K, Taylor B, Ellerman J, Kowalkowski MA. The association between antibiotic delay intervals and hospital mortality among patients treated in the emergency department for suspected sepsis. Crit Care Med 2021;49:741–747.

7. Puskarich MA, Trzeciak S, Shapiro NI, et al.; Emergency Medicine Shock Research Network (EMSHOCKNET). Association between timing of antibiotic administration and mortality from septic shock in patients treated with a quantitative resuscitation protocol. Crit Care Med 2011;39:2066–2071.

8. IDSA Sepsis Task Force. Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) POSITION STATEMENT: why IDSA did not endorse the surviving sepsis campaign guidelines. Clin Infect Dis 2018;66:1631–1635.

9. Evans L, Rhodes A, Alhazzani W, et al. Executive summary: surviving sepsis campaign: international guidelines for the management of sepsis and septic shock 2021. Crit Care Med 2021;49:1974–1982.

10. Sterling SA, Miller WR, Pryor J, Puskarich MA, Jones AE. The impact of timing of antibiotics on outcomes in severe sepsis and septic shock: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Crit Care Med 2015;43:1907–1915.

11. Rothrock SG, Cassidy DD, Barneck M, et al. Outcome of immediate versus early antibiotics in severe sepsis and septic shock: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Ann Emerg Med 2020;76:427–441.

12. Huang J, Yang JT, Liu JC. The association between mortality and door-to-antibiotic time: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Postgrad Med J 2023;99:1000–1007.

13. Tang F, Yuan H, Li X, Qiao L. Effect of delayed antibiotic use on mortality outcomes in patients with sepsis or septic shock: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Int Immunopharmacol 2024;129:111616.

14. Hutton B, Salanti G, Caldwell DM, et al. The PRISMA extension statement for reporting of systematic reviews incorporating network meta-analyses of health care interventions: checklist and explanations. Ann Intern Med 2015;162:777–784.

15. Seo HJ, Kim SY, Lee YJ, Park JE. RoBANS 2: a revised risk of bias assessment tool for nonrandomized studies of interventions. Korean J Fam Med 2023;44:249–260.

16. Borenstein M, Hedges LV, Higgins JP, Rothstein HR. A basic introduction to fixed-effect and random-effects models for meta-analysis. Res Synth Methods 2010;1:97–111.

17. Higgins JP, Thompson SG. Quantifying heterogeneity in a meta-analysis. Stat Med 2002;21:1539–1558.

18. Polit DF, Beck CT. Nursing research: Generating and assessing evidence in nursing practice. 10th ed. Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2016. 19. Abe T, Kushimoto S, Tokuda Y, et al.; JAAM FORECAST group. Implementation of earlier antibiotic administration in patients with severe sepsis and septic shock in Japan: a descriptive analysis of a prospective observational study. Crit Care 2019;23:360.

20. Bloos F, Thomas-Rüddel D, Rüddel H, et al.; MEDUSA Study Group. Impact of compliance with infection management guidelines on outcome in patients with severe sepsis: a prospective observational multi-center study. Crit Care 2014;18:R42.

21. Suberviola Cañas B, Jáuregui R, Ballesteros MÁ, Leizaola O, González-Castro A, Castellanos-Ortega Á. Effects of antibiotic administration delay and inadequacy upon the survival of septic shock patients. Med Intensiva 2015;39:459–466.

22. Hu B, Xiang H, Dong Y, Portner E, Peng Z, Kashani K. Timeline of sepsis bundle component completion and its association with septic shock outcomes. J Crit Care 2020;60:143–151.

23. Lee YJ, Ryoo SM, Oh SH, et al. Early antibiotic administration and mortality in patients with septic shock in emergency department. J Korean Soc Emerg Med 2015;26:89–94. 24. Liang CY, Yang YY, Hung CC, Wang TH, Hsu YC. Prognostic values of the timing of antibiotic administration and the sepsis bundle component in elderly patients with septic shock: a retrospective study. Shock 2022;57:181–188.

25. Lueangarun S, Leelarasamee A. Impact of inappropriate empiric antimicrobial therapy on mortality of septic patients with bacteremia: a retrospective study. Interdiscip Perspect Infect Dis 2012;2012:765205.

26. Ryoo SM, Kim WY, Sohn CH, et al. Prognostic value of timing of antibiotic administration in patients with septic shock treated with early quantitative resuscitation. Am J Med Sci 2015;349:328–333.

27. Savran Y, Duran Y, Comert B. Impact of time to antibiotics on mortality in severe sepsis and septic shock. Acta Medica Mediterranea 2016;1:17–22. 28. Tan IR, Mendoza M. Early antibiotic therapy (EAT) decreases in-hospital mortality of patients with sepsis at the emergency department. Philipp J Intern Med 2019;57:87–92. 29. Yokota PK, Marra AR, Martino MD, et al. Impact of appropriate antimicrobial therapy for patients with severe sepsis and septic shock--a quality improvement study. PLoS One 2014;9:e104475.

30. Klein Klouwenberg PM, Cremer OL, van Vught LA, et al. Likelihood of infection in patients with presumed sepsis at the time of intensive care unit admission: a cohort study. Crit Care 2015;19:319.

31. Rhee C, Kadri SS, Dekker JP, et al.; CDC Prevention Epicenters Program. Prevalence of antibiotic-resistant pathogens in culture-proven sepsis and outcomes associated with inadequate and broad-spectrum empiric antibiotic use. JAMA Netw Open 2020;3:e202899.

32. Pak TR, Young J, McKenna CS, et al. Risk of misleading conclusions in observational studies of time-to-antibiotics and mortality in suspected sepsis. Clin Infect Dis 2023;77:1534–1543.