Patients with dialysis-requiring acute kidney injury (AKI-D) are prescribed the same dialysis as end-stage kidney disease (ESKD) patients, but some patients with AKI-D have the potential to recover, according to research published in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology. Ian E. McCoy, MD, and colleagues examined AKI-D patient care for adults who initiated outpatient hemodialysis. Initial dialysis prescriptions and the frequency of blood work and timed urine collection in the first 30 days were compared for incident AKI-D and patients with incident ESKD. Patients with AKI-D were followed for 3 months or until recovery or death. A total of 1,754 patients who initiated outpatient hemodialysis for AKI-D and 6,197 who initiated dialysis for ESKD were included. A total of 94% of patients with AKI-D were initially prescribed dialysis three times/week, which was similar to patients with ESKD (95%). Timed urine collections were completed in 28% of patients with AKI-D during the first 30 days of outpatient dialysis compared with 16% in the ESKD group. Overall, 41% of patients with AKI-D recovered during follow-up.
