Assessment Of The Renal Angina Index For Prediction Of Acute Kidney Injury On Patients Admitted To An European Paediatric Intensive Care Unit (Picu)

Background: Acute kidney injury (AKI) is associated with worse outcomes and increased morbidity and mortality in pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) patients. The renal angina index (RAI) has been proposed as an early prediction tool for AKI development. Objectives: The objective was to evaluate outcomes of RAI-positive patients and to compare RAI performance with traditional AKI markers across different patient groups (medical/post-surgical). This was an observational retrospective study. All children admitted to a tertiary hospital PICU over a 3-year period were included. Electronic medical records were reviewed. Day 1 RAI was calculated, as was the presence and staging of day 3 AKI. Results: A total of 593 patients were included; 56% were male, the mean age was 55 months, and 17% had a positive RAI. This was associated with day 3 AKI development and worse outcomes, such as greater need for kidney replacement therapy, longer duration of mechanical ventilation, vasoactive support and PICU stay, and higher mortality. For all-stage kidney injury, RAI presented a sensitivity of 87.5% and a specificity of 88.1%. Prediction of day 3 all-stage AKI by RAI had an AUC=0.878; its performance increased for severe AKI (AUC = 0.93). RAI was superior to serum creatinine increase and KDIGO AKI staging on day 1 in predicting severe AKI development. The performance remained high irrespective of the type of admission. Conclusions: The RAI is a simple and inexpensive tool that can be used with medical and post-surgical PICU patients to predict AKI development and anticipate complications, allowing for the adoption of preventive measures.