Abstract:
Background: Acute kidney injury (AKI) affects 3–7 % of patients admitted to the hospital and approximately
25–30 % of patients in the intensive care unit. RIFLE, a newly developed international consensus classification
for AKI, defines three grades of severity—class R (risk), I (injury) and F (failure). The aim of this study was to evaluate
whether the RIFLE system of classification can detect the incidence of AKI using retrospective data of in-patients at
the Effia-Nkwanta Regional Hospital.
Methods: A total of 1070 in-patients’ records spanning a period of 6 months, from July 2014 to December 2014,
was used. Demographic data and hospital admission serum creatinine of each participant were used for the
calculation of estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) using the 4-variable modification of diet in renal
disease (MDRD) equation. Also, the baseline serum creatinine was estimated assuming a standard GFR of
75 ml/min/1.73 m2 using the simplified MDRD equation.
Results: Males had higher serum creatinine, eGFR, and baseline serum creatinine than females (P < 0.0001).
However, the level of increase in baseline serum creatinine was higher in females than males (P = 0.0212). The
percentage ratios of the various classes from the SCr/ePCr (hospital admission serum creatinine/estimated
plasma creatinine) criteria (R-1.45, I-1.53 and F-3.26) were higher than that of the eGFR criteria (R-0.34, I-0.11,
F-0.12). The SCr/ePCr criteria gave more risk (89.7 %) than that of the eGFR criteria (23.1 %). The number of
Injury and normal patients from the eGFR criteria was higher than the SCr/ePCr criteria.
Conclusion: AKI was common in the ICU population with SCr/ePCr detecting more AKI than the eGFR criteria.
Males had more injury and failure than females using the eGFR criteria whereas the SCr/ePCr gave females more risk
and injury than males. A prospective cohort study must be employed in subsequent studies using the RIFLE criteria to
assess the incidence of AKI in hospitalized patients with known diseases or medical conditions.
