Elderly patients with acute kidney injury (AKI): clinical features and risk factors for mortality

Elderly patients with AKI are associated with considerable mortality. The clinical features and risk factors predicting poor outcomes of these patients are not known. The aim of this study is to investigate the clinical features and risk factors affecting mortality in elderly patients with AKI.

A prospective study on the elderly patients with AKI (age ≥65 years old) was conducted. A consecutive sample of 99 elderly patients with AKI was evaluated. These patients were divided into survivor group and non-survivor group according their outcomes. Factors including clinical characteristics and laboratory features were compared between these two groups. Analysis of correlations between death and categorized risk factors was done by means of Pearson's chi-squared test (or Fisher's exact test). Multivariate logistic regression was performed to analyze the possible risk factors for death.

The main causes of the elderly patients with AKI were ischemia (53.34%), surgery (33.33%), sepsis/infection (10.10%), nephrotoxic drug (3.03%). The mortality rate of the elderly patients with AKI was 42%. Significant differences were found between the survival group and non-survival group of the elderly patients in concomitant disease, complicated with multiple organ dysfunction syndrome (MODS), albumin, etc. Concomitant disease and MODS were found to be the independent risk factors for death of the elderly patients with AKI after adjusting for age, sex, pre-albumin, sepsis/infection, and serum creatinine (SCr).

This study found that concomitant disease and MODS were the independent risk factors for the death of elderly patients with AKI.