Contemporary strategies to preserve renal function during cardiac and vascular surgery

Mortality rates associated with perioperative acute renal failure (ARF) range from 60% to 90%. The major causes of ARF are prerenal factors that decrease renal blood flow; intrarenal factors that have a direct effect on tubules, interstitium, or glomeruli; and postrenal factors that obstruct urine outflow. Current strategies to provide perioperative renal protection include maintaining adequate renal O2 delivery, suppressing renovascular vasoconstriction, renovascular vasodilatation, maintaining tubular flow, decreasing renal cellular O2 consumption, and attenuating reperfusion injury. A study of patients undergoing elective repair of a thoracoabdominal aortic aneurysm (TAAA) found that the use of the selective dopamine-1 receptor agonist fenoldopam was associated with reductions in mortality, dialysis requirements, and lengths of stay in the hospital and intensive care unit. The study authors suggest that the improved patient outcomes and hospital-utilization data resulting from the use of fenoldopam were directly related to the protection of renal function during surgery and a reduction of postoperative renal complications.