Personalized Recommendations for Acute Kidney Injury (AKI) Care Using a Kidney Action Team (KAT): A Randomized Trial

Acute Kidney Injury (AKI) is a common hospital complication, occurring in roughly 5-20% of inpatients and contributing to a greater risk for dialysis initiation, clinical decline, and death. Yet, AKI is frequently asymptomatic and overlooked in hospital settings, while internationally defined “best practices” for treatment – namely drug dosing, avoiding nephrotoxic exposures, and further laboratory work-up – show inconsistent follow-through.

Rather than simply increase provider awareness of AKI, this clinical trial investigates whether the impact of real-time personalized recommendations for the workup and treatment of patients with AKI will improve the rates of “AKI best practices” and decrease occurrences of inpatient dialysis, mortality, and AKI progression. Given the diversity of both AKI patients and AKI etiologies, these real-time recommendations are provided by an interdisciplinary “Kidney Action Team” (KAT) consisting of a trained nephrologist and pharmacist. Patients will be randomized to either receive standard of care treatment or to an active intervention arm in which the KAT’s individualized recommendations are delivered to their primary care team.

Funding information for this project

This study is funded by a grant from the Association of Healthcare Research and Quality.