Impact of Different KDIGO Criteria on Clinical Outcomes for Early Identification of Acute Kidney Injury after Non-Cardiac Surgery

Abstract

The Kidney Disease Improving Global Outcomes (KDIGO) guidelines are currently used in acute kidney injury (AKI) diagnosis and include both serum creatinine (SCR) and urine output (UO) criteria. Currently, many AKI-related studies have inconsistently defined AKI, which possibly affects the comparison of their results. Therefore, we hypothesized that the different criteria in the KDIGO guidelines vary in measuring the incidence of AKI and its association with clinical outcomes. We retrospectively analyzed that data of patients admitted to the intensive care unit after non-cardiac surgery in 2019. Three different criteria used to define AKI were included: UOmean, mean UO < 0.5 mL/kg/h over time; UOcont, hourly UO < 0.5 mL/kg/h over time; or SCR, KDIGO guidelines SCR criteria. A total of 777 patients were included, and the incidence of UOmean-AKI was 33.1%, the incidence of UOcont-AKI was 7.9%, and the incidence of SCR-AKI was 2.0%. There were differences in the length of ICU stay and hospital stay between AKI and non-AKI patients under different criteria. We found differences in the incidence and clinical outcomes of AKI after non-cardiac surgery when using different KDIGO criteria.