Community acquired acute kidney injury: findings from a large population cohort

The extent of patient contact with medical services prior to development of community acquired-acute kidney injury (CA-AKI)is unknown.

We examined the relationship between incident CA-AKI alerts, previous contact with hospital or primary care and clinical outcomes.

A prospective national cohort study of all electronic AKIalerts representing adult CA-AKI.

Data were collected for all cases of adult (≥18 years of age) CA-AKI in Wales between 1 November 2013 and 31 January 2017.

There were a total of 50 560 incident CA-AKI alerts. In 46.8% there was a measurement of renal function in the 30 days prior to the AKI alert. In this group, in 63.8% this was in a hospital setting, of which 37.6% were as an inpatient and 37.5% in Accident and Emergency. Progression of AKI to a higher AKI stage (13.1 vs. 9.8%, P < 0.001) (or for AKI 3 an increase of > 50% from the creatinine value generating the alert), the proportion of patients admitted to Intensive Care (5.5 vs. 4.9%, P = 0.001) and 90-day mortality (27.2 vs. 18.5%, P < 0.001) was significantly higher for patients with a recent test. 90-day mortality was highest for patients with a recent test taken in an inpatient setting prior to CA-AKI (30.9%).

Almost half of all patients presenting with CA-AKI are already known to medical services, the majority of which have had recent measurement of renal function in a hospital setting, suggesting that AKI for at least some of these may potentially be predictable and/or avoidable.