Early Treatment with Human Albumin Solution in Continuous Renal Replacement Patients

To study the impact of early human albumin solution (HAS) in continuous renal replacement therapy (RRT) patients.

Analysis of Randomized Evaluation of Normal versus Augmented Level (RENAL) RRT trial data.

Of 1,464 patients, 500 (34%) received early albumin. These patients had higher illness severity scores, greater use of mechanical ventilation, and 90-day mortality (51 vs. 41%; p < 0.001). However, early albumin carried similar RRT dependence risk among survivors at day 90 (4.9 vs. 5.8%; p = 0.62). On Cox proportional hazards regression, with standardized inverse probability of treatment weighting, early albumin was not associated with increased mortality (hazard ratio [HR]: 1.23, 95% CI: 0.97-1.55; p = 0.09) or recovery to RRT independence (HR: 0.92, 95% CI: 0.78-1.10; p = 0.38).

Early albumin was administered to one-third of RENAL trial patients and in those with greater illness severity. Early albumin was not independently associated with mortality risk or rate of recovery to RRT independence.