Acute kidney injury: Renal disease in the ICU / Lesión renal aguda: nefropatía en la UCI

Acute kidney injury (AKI) in the ICU frequently requires costly supportive therapies, has high morbidity, and its long-term prognosis is not as good as it has been presumed so far. Consequently, AKI generates a significant burden for the healthcare system. The problem is that AKI lacks an effective treatment and the best approach relies on early secondary prevention. Therefore, to facilitate early diagnosis, a broader definition of AKI should be established, and a marker with more sensitivity and early-detection capacity than serum creatinine - the most common marker of AKI - should be identified. Fortunately, new classification systems (RIFLE, AKIN or KDIGO) have been developed to solve these problems, and the discovery of new biomarkers for kidney injury will hopefully change the way we approach renal patients. As a first step, the concept of renal failure has changed from being a ‘static’ disease to being a ‘dynamic process’ that requires continuous evaluation of kidney function adapted to the reality of the ICU patient

El tratamiento de lesiones renales agudas (LRA) en la UCI requiere habitualmente procedimientos complementarios costosos, se asocia a una elevada morbilidad y su pronóstico a largo plazo no es tan bueno como se creía hasta ahora. En consecuencia, las LRA ocasionan una importante carga para el sistema sanitario. El problema es que no existe un tratamiento eficaz para las LRA y el mejor enfoque se basa en la prevención secundaria precoz. Por consiguiente, para facilitar el diagnóstico precoz, es necesario establecer una definición más amplia de la LRA así como identificar un marcador con mayor sensibilidad y capacidad de diagnóstico precoz que la creatinina sérica (el marcador más habitual de LRA en la actualidad). Afortunadamente, se han desarrollado nuevos sistemas de clasificación (RIFLE, AKIN o KDIGO) para solucionar este problema y se espera que el descubrimiento de nuevos biomarcadores de lesión renal cambie la forma en que abordamos el tratamiento de los pacientes con nefropatía. Como primer paso, el concepto de insuficiencia renal ha pasado de considerarse una enfermedad «estática» a un «proceso dinámico» que requiere una evaluación continua de la función renal adaptada a la realidad del paciente en la UCI

Acute kidney injury: Renal disease in the ICU.

Acute kidney injury (AKI) in the ICU frequently requires costly supportive therapies, has high morbidity, and its long-term prognosis is not as good as it has been presumed so far. Consequently, AKI generates a significant burden for the healthcare system. The problem is that AKI lacks an effective treatment and the best approach relies on early secondary prevention. Therefore, to facilitate early diagnosis, a broader definition of AKI should be established, and a marker with more sensitivity and early-detection capacity than serum creatinine - the most common marker of AKI - should be identified. Fortunately, new classification systems (RIFLE, AKIN or KDIGO) have been developed to solve these problems, and the discovery of new biomarkers for kidney injury will hopefully change the way we approach renal patients. As a first step, the concept of renal failure has changed from being a "static" disease to being a "dynamic process" that requires continuous evaluation of kidney function adapted to the reality of the ICU patient.