BACKGROUND:

Acute renal failure is one of the most severe complications of cirrhosis and entails a bad prognosis. The studies that had used most current definitions of acute kidney injury such as AKIN (Acute Kidney Injury Network) or RIFLE (The Risk, Injury, Failure, Loss and End-stage kidney disease criteria) has focused in patients admitted to the critical care units, and thus they can not be generalized to other hospitalized patients. Recently, the International Club of Ascites (ICA) adopted a dynamic definition of acute kidney failure in patient with cirrhosis, defined like increase of the creatinine level ≥0.3 mg/dL in the last 48 h; or a increase ≥50% from the basal creatinine in the last seven days, staged according the increase of creatinine.

OBJECTIVES:

To evaluate the impact of acute kidney injury severity according to the classification of the International Club of Ascites in the mortality of hospitalized patients with liver cirrhosis. To know the main triggers of acute kidney failure in hospitalized patients with liver cirrhosis, and to know the patterns of recovery and progression of renal failure.

PATIENTS AND METHOD:

A transversal, observational, no-randomized multicentric study designed. We used the definition of acute kidney failure proposed for the ICA. Patients were included from the General Hospital Ticoman and the General Hospital of Ecatepec in Mexico, in a four-month-period, from 1st April to 31st July of 2015; informed consent was obtained from the patients or in the pertinent case from the responsible familiar. Patients with less than 18 years old, with acute liver failure or chronic renal failure were excluded.

RESULTS:

They were included 45 patients with liver cirrhosis, 36 men, with a mean age of 46.2 years old. The etiology of the liver cirrhosis was alcohol in 40 patients (89%), viral in 3 (7%) and mixed in 2 (4%). The stage of acute liver failure was stage 1: 36 (80%), stage 2: 8 (18%) and stage 3: 1 (2%). Seven deaths occurred (15.5%), from there all the patients were classified in the C stage of the Child-Pugh Classification; death occurred with acute renal failure in initial stage 1; in 6 (13%) with progression to the stage 3 and in initial stage 2 in 1 (2%) with progression to stage 3. The severity of cirrhosis accord to the MELD classification was 31.07±8.44 points in the mortality cases, compared with 22.9±9.64 points (p=1.21) in the survivals. Child-Pugh score in the cases of death was 14.29±.9 vs 0.29±2.31 in survivals (p=0.001).

CONCLUSION:

Mortality in patients with liver cirrhosis and acute kidney failure was more frequent in patients with progression of the acute kidney failure, and in those with a more severe liver damage in the MELD or Child-Pugh scores. There are necessary cohort studies for the validation of the recent classification of the International Club of Ascites for Acute kidney failure in cirrhosis, and to determine the factors associated to the increase of mortality in this group of patients.

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