Surgery-specific patterns of perioperative amino acid administration and associated acute kidney injury risk: a...

Recent trials demonstrated renoprotective effects of amino acid infusion in cardiac surgery patients, but real-world utilization patterns and outcomes across surgical specialties remain unknown. We investigated perioperative amino acid administration patterns and associated acute kidney injury (AKI) risk across different surgical populations.

Retrospective cohort study using the INSPIRE database (2011-2020) from Seoul National University Hospital. Adult patients undergoing surgery with ≥ 24-h stays were included. Amino acid preparations were identified by ATC codes, and AKI was defined by KDIGO criteria. Primary outcomes were AKI incidence and utilization patterns across surgical departments.

Among 22,972 patients, 899 (3.9%) received peri-operative amino acid preparations with an overall AKI incidence of 3.7%. Utilization varied 60-fold across departments (0.2-11.5%). Surgery-specific patterns emerged: cardiac surgery showed no AKI events in amino acid users (0/50) versus 4.2% in non-users (p = 0.267), while non-cardiac surgery demonstrated increased AKI risk with amino acid use (7.4% vs 3.4%; RR = 2.16, 95% CI 1.65-2.85, p < 0.001). Multivariable analysis confirmed amino acid use as an independent AKI predictor (OR = 2.01, 95% CI 1.52-2.60). Machine learning analysis confirmed amino acids as the strongest AKI predictor, with Random Forest achieving superior performance (AUC-ROC 0.782) and revealing significant non-linear interactions. Propensity score matching (799 pairs) confirmed the association (OR = 1.63, 95% CI 1.05-2.52, p = 0.029).

Perioperative amino acid administration demonstrates surgery-specific patterns with differential AKI associations. These findings suggest that surgery-specific factors should be considered when developing amino-acid protocols, although causality cannot be established from this observational study.