HOUSTON—Continuous renal replacement therapy (CRRT) may shorten renal recovery time in patients who experience acute kidney injury (AKI) following open heart surgery (OHS), according to researchers at Pusan National University School of Medicine in Pusan, Korea.
In a retrospective study conducted by Jungmin Son, MD, and colleagues, 115 (49.2%) of 234 patients who underwent OHS experienced AKI post-operatively. Of these patients, 17 were placed on CRRT and 98 were treated with fluid and diuretics (controls).
The CRRT group had a higher mortality rate than controls (65% vs. 3%), but the researchers observed that CRRT group had poorer baseline characteristics, including worse APACHE III scores (72.7 vs. 52.3). Still, the time to recovery of renal function was faster with CRRT (93.6 hours vs. 271.2 hours).
Continue Reading
Although the mean duration of intensive care unit stay was 19.2 days in the CRRT group and 8.7 days among controls, the difference was not statistically significant. Dr. Son’s group presented findings here at the 29th Annual Dialysis Conference.
