Acute renal failure: six months pilot study in qatar

Over a period of six months, 55 patients out of 11,216 (0.49%) admitted to the hospital developed acute renal failure (ARF). The diagnosis of ARF was based on the usual criteria, a sudden rise in blood urea nitrogen and creatinine with or without oliguria. Patients age ranged between 15 and 81 years with a mean of 51.9 years. Renal ischemia (69%) and nephrotoxic drugs (16.3%) were the two main etiologic factors. Among the causes of ischemia, septic shock was the commonest (29%), followed by severe hypotension due to several causes such as hemorrhage, burns, severe diarrhea and cardiogenic shock (25.4%), and ACE inhibitors (10.9%). ARF was associated with an average of 15.8 days stay in hospital versus 5.1 days for the overall hospital admissions. Immediate management of hypotension by intravenous fluid replacement, vasopressor agents and the necessary surgical intervention was appropriately considered. Intravenous frusemide was used for oliguric patients. Intermittent hemodialysis was used in 18 patients and continuous venovenous hemofiltration in six patients. Twelve patients with ARF due to ischemia died, while there were no deaths in the nephrotoxic group (p < 0.05). The overall mortality was (21.8%), which had no correlation with patient age. All non-oliguric patients survived with the mortality being exclusively in the oliguric group.