When I was first diagnosed with thyroid cancer, I didn't feel any odd lumps or nodules in my neck, but I was suffering from muscle weakness, tiredness and getting constant colds. After a particularly nasty bug I noticed that my lymph nodes never seemed to go down in size.
SIRS is nonspecific and can be caused by ischemia, inflammation, trauma, infection, or several insults combined. Thus, SIRS is not always related to infection. Venn diagram showing overlap of infection, bacteremia, sepsis, systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS), and multiorgan dysfunction.
Comstedt et al, in a study of systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS) in acutely hospitalized medical patients, demonstrated a 6.9 times higher 28-day mortality in SIRS patients than in non-SIRS patients. Most deaths occurred in SIRS patients with an associated malignancy.