Acute Kidney Injury

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:04 — 1.5MB)

Subscribe: RSS

reports

Acute injury to the kidneys may occur in one in ten
hospitalized people, recent estimates show. Measuring a protein in the blood
known by the acronym SuPAR may help, according to a study in the New England
Journal of Medicine. Chirag Parikh, director of nephrology at Johns Hopkins,
says this is an area of active study.

Parikh: We and others are looking at several proteins that
show an inherent risk of kidney getting injured, when a patient gets exposed to
the healthcare environment. So at the time of cardiac surgery, some forms of
medication that are given, contrast procedures, so all of these are settings
where some people have weaker kidneys and if you can measure it, it would be
useful.  :25

Parikh says various strategies can be employed to reduce the
potential for acute kidney injury when people have surgery or are hospitalized,
and knowing who’s at risk can help target those interventions appropriately. At
Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.