There are many criteria for the diagnosis of infection and sepsis in most patients, but the standardized definitions for infection and sepsis in burn patients are less applicable to the burn population and have never been developed. We recommend that suspicious systemic infection (sepsis) should be considered as a clinical syndrome defined by the presence of signs and symptoms of systemic infection even with negative blood microbial culture, systemic infection should be identified with positive blood microbial culture or clinical response to antimicrobials. We also expand the list of diagnostic criteria for systemic infection to reflect clinical experience in burn patients. Further refinement will be necessary when these definitions are considered for routine application in clinical practice.