Hospital Mortality in the United States following Acute Kidney Injury

Abstract EN

Acute kidney injury (AKI) is a common reason for hospital admission and complication of many inpatient procedures.

The temporal incidence of AKI and the association of AKI admissions with in-hospital mortality are a growing problem in the world today.

In this review, we discuss the epidemiology of AKI and its association with in-hospital mortality in the United States.

AKI has been growing at a rate of 14% per year since 2001.

However, the in-hospital mortality associated with AKI has been on the decline starting with 21.9% in 2001 to 9.1 in 2011, even though the number of AKI-related in-hospital deaths increased almost twofold from 147,943 to 285,768 deaths.

We discuss the importance of the 71% reduction in AKI-related mortality among hospitalized patients in the United States and draw on the discussion of whether or not this is a phenomenon of hospital billing (coding) or improvements to the management of AKI.