Predicting mortality among critically ill patients with acute kidney injury treated with renal replacement therapy: development and validation of new prediction models

Purpose — Severe acute kidney injury (AKI) is associated with a significant risk of mortality and persistent renal replacement therapy (RRT) dependence. The objective of this study was to develop prediction models for mortality at 90-day and 1-year following RRT initiation in critically ill patients with AKI.

Methods — All patients who commenced RRT in the intensive care unit for AKI at a tertiary care hospital between 2007 and 2014 constituted the development cohort. We evaluated the external validity of our mortality models using data from the multicentre OPTIMAL-AKI study.

Results — The development cohort consisted of 594 patients, of whom 320(54%) died and 40 (15% of surviving patients) remained RRT-dependent at 90-day Eleven variables were included in the model to predict 90-day mortality (AUC:0.79, 95%CI:0.76–0.82). The performance of the 90-day mortality model declined upon validation in the OPTIMAL-AKI cohort (AUC:0.61, 95%CI:0.54–0.69) and showed modest calibration. Similar results were obtained for mortality model at 1-year.

Conclusions — Routinely collected variables at the time of RRT initiation have limited ability to predict mortality in critically ill patients with AKI who commence RRT.