Prevalence of Elevated Serum Creatinine Concentration in Dogs Presenting to a Veterinary Academic Medical Center...

The epidemiology of kidney disease is not extensively described in dogs.

To better understand the prevalence of elevated serum creatinine concentration in dogs.

Client-owned dogs.

A retrospective, observational cross-sectional study design was used. We made a dataset of 115,631 hospital visits of all dogs presenting from October 2010 to October 2014. We estimated the prevalence and risk of elevated serum creatinine, defined as >1.6 mg/dL, in evaluated dogs.

Of 115,631 visits, 98,693 were outpatient visits and 16,938 were hospital admissions. Among outpatient visits, 9,983 (10.1%) had serum creatinine assessment (4,423 [44.3%] visits were first visits), whereas, among hospital admissions, 12,228 (60.0%) had at least 1 serum creatinine (7,731 [75.6%] admissions were first admissions). The prevalence of elevated serum creatinine concentration in all evaluated dogs was 11.5% (95% CI: 11.0%, 11.9%); 10.2% (95% CI: 9.6%, 10.8%) of inpatients and 12.9% (95% CI: 12.1%, 13.8%) of outpatients had elevated serum creatinine concentration. The relative risk (RR) of elevated serum creatinine concentration was significantly higher in geriatric dogs (outpatient RR 1.45 [95% CI: 1.23, 1.70], inpatient RR 1.43 [95% CI: 1.16, 1.76]) and lower in young dogs (outpatient RR 0.39 [95% CI: 0.26, 0.59], inpatient RR 0.44 [95% CI: 0.32, 0.62]) when compared to the measured population risk.

When selected for laboratory evaluation, the proportion of dogs presenting to an academic medical center with evidence of kidney injury is high compared to previous reports and might reflect a population of sicker dogs.