Acute kidney injury demographics and outcomes: changes following introduction of electronic acute kidney injury alerts—an analysis of a national dataset

Background Electronic alerts for acute kidney injury (AKI) have been widely advocated. Our aim was to describe the changes in AKI demographics and outcomes following implementation of a national electronic AKI alert programme. Methods A prospective national cohort study was undertaken to collect data on all cases of AKI in adult patients (≥18 years of age) between 1 April 2015 and 31 March 2019. Results Over the period of data collection, there were 193 838 AKI episodes in a total of 132 599 patients. The lowest incidence of AKI was seen in the first year after implementation of electronic alerts. A 30-day mortality was highest in Year 1 and significantly lower in all subsequent years. A direct comparison of mortality in Years 1 and 4 demonstrated a significantly increased relative risk (RR) of death in Year 1: RR = 1.08 [95% confidence interval (CI) 1.054–1.114 P < 0.001]. This translates into a number needed to treat in Year 4 for one additional patient to survive of 69.5 (95% CI 51.7–106.2) when directly comparing the outcomes across the 2 years. The increase in the number of cases and improved outcomes was more pronounced in community-acquired AKI, and was associated with a significant increase in patient hospitalization. Conclusions This study represents the first large-scale dataset to clearly demonstrate that a national AKI alerting system which highlights AKI is associated with a change in both AKI demographics and patient outcomes