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Risk Factors For Death Among Veterans Following Acute Kidney Injury
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Risk Factors For Death Among Veterans Following Acute Kidney Injury

Benjamin R. Griffin, Mary Vaughan-Sarrazin, Eli Perencevich, Masaaki Yamada, Melissa Swee, Meenakshi Sambharia, Saket Girotra, Heather S. Reisinger and Diana Jalal
The American journal of medicine, Vol.136(5), pp.449-457
05/2023
DOI: 10.1016/j.amjmed.2023.01.006
PMCID: PMC10765959
PMID: 36708794
url
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10765959/pdf/nihms-1953509.pdfView
Open Access

Abstract

Background : Acute Kidney Injury is prevalent among hospitalized Veterans and associated with increased risk of death following discharge. However, risk factors for death following acute kidney injury have not been well defined. We developed a mortality prediction model using Veterans Health Administration (VHA) data. Methods : This retrospective cohort study included inpatients from 2013 and 2018 with a creatinine increase of ≥0.3 mg/dL. We evaluated 45 variables for inclusion in our final model with a primary outcome of one-year mortality. Bootstrap sampling with replacement was used to identify variables selected in >60% of models using stepwise selection. Best sub-sets regression using Akaike information criteria was used to identify the best-fitting parsimonious model. Results : A total of 182,683 patients were included, and 38,940 (21.3%) died within 1 year of discharge. The 10-variable model to predict mortality included age, chronic lung disease, cancer within 5 years, unexplained weight loss, dementia, congestive heart failure, hematocrit, blood urea nitrogen, bilirubin, and albumin. Notably, acute kidney injury stage, chronic kidney disease, discharge creatinine, and proteinuria were not selected for inclusion. C-statistics in the primary validation cohorts were 0.77 for the final parsimonious model, compared to 0.52 for acute kidney injury stage alone. Conclusion : We identified risk factors for long-term mortality following acute kidney injury. Our 10-variable model did not include traditional renal variables, suggesting that non-kidney factors contribute to the risk of death more than measures of kidney disease in this population, a finding which may have implications for post-acute kidney injury care.

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