Identifying risk for acute kidney injury in infants and children following cardiac arrest

Objectives: Our goal was to identify risk factors for acute kidney injury in children surviving cardiac arrest. Design: Retrospective analysis of a public access dataset. Setting: Fifteen children's hospitals associated with the Pediatric Emergency Care Applied Research Network. Patients: Two hundred ninety-six subjects between 1 day and 18 years old who experienced in-hospital or out-of-hospital cardiac arrest between July 1, 2003, and December 31, 2004. Interventions: None. Measurements and Main Results: Our primary outcome was development of acute kidney injury as defined by the Acute Kidney Injury Network criteria. An ordinal probit model was developed. We found six critical explanatory variables, including total number of epinephrine doses, postcardiac arrest blood pressure, arrest location, presence of a chronic lung condition, pH, and presence of an abnormal baseline creatinine. Total number of epinephrine doses received as well as rate of epinephrine dosing impacted acute kidney injury risk and severity of acute kidney injury. Conclusions: This study is the first to identify risk factors for acute kidney injury in children after cardiac arrest. Our findings regarding the impact of epinephrine dosing are of particular interest and suggest potential for epinephrine toxicity with regard to acute kidney injury. The ability to identify and potentially modify risk factors for acute kidney injury after cardiac arrest may lead to improved morbidity and mortality in this population.