SummaryBackground and objectives Urine neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin (uNGAL) has been shown to accurately predict and allow early detection of AKI, as assessed by an increase in serum creatinine in children and adults. The present study explores the accuracy of uNGAL for the prediction of severe AKI-related outcomes in neonates and infants undergoing cardiac surgery: dialysis requirement and/or death within 30 days.Design, setting, participants, & measurements Prospective, observational cohort study conducted in a tertiary referral pediatric cardiac intensive care unit, including 75 neonates and 125 infants undergoing surgery with cardiopulmonary bypass between August 1, 2010, and May 31, 2011. Urine samples were collected before surgery and at median of five time points within 48 hours of bypass. Urine NGAL was quantified as absolute concentration, creatinine-normalized concentration, and absolute excretion rate, and a clusterization algorithm was applied to the individual uNGAL kinetics. The accuracy for the prediction of the outcome was assessed using receiver-operating characteristic areas, likelihood ratios, diagnostic odds ratios, net reclassification index, integrated reclassification improvement, and number needed to screen.Results A total of 1176 urine samples were collected. Of all patients, 8% required dialysis and 4% died. Three clusters of uNGAL kinetics were identified, including patients with significantly different outcomes. The uNGAL level peaked between 1 and 3 hours of bypass and remained high in half of all patients who required dialysis or died. The uNGAL levels measured within 24 hours of bypass accurately predicted the outcome and performed best after normalization to creatinine, with varying cutoffs according to the time elapsed since bypass. The number needed to screen to correctly identify the risk of dialysis or death in one patient varied between 1.5 and 2.6 within 12 hours of bypass.Conclusions uNGAL is a valuable predictive tool of dialysis requirement and death in neonates and infants with AKI after cardiac surgery.

BackgroundUncertainties about the pathophysiological processes resulting in cardiac surgery-related acute kidney injury (AKI) in infants concern the relative impact of the most prominent risk factors, the clinical relevance of changes in glomerular filtration rate vs tubular injury, and the usefulness of available diagnostic tools. Structural equation modelling could allow for the assessment of these complex relationships.MethodsA structural model was specified using data from a prospective observational cohort of 200 patients <1 year of age undergoing cardiopulmonary bypass surgery. It included four latent variables: AKI, modelled as a construct of perioperative creatinine variation, of oliguria and of urine neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin (uNGAL) concentrations; the cardiopulmonary bypass characteristics; the occurrence of a post-operative low cardiac output syndrome and the post-operative outcome.ResultsThe model showed a good fit, and all path coefficients were statistically significant. The bypass was the most prominent risk factor, with a path coefficient of 0.820 (95 % CI 0.527–0.979), translating to a 67.2 % explanation for the risk of AKI. A strong relationships was found between AKI and early uNGAL excretion, and between AKI and the post-operative outcome, with path coefficients of 0.611 (95 % CI 0.347–0.777) and 0.741 (95 % CI 0.610–0.988), respectively. The path coefficient between AKI and a >50 % increase in serum creatinine was smaller, with a path coefficient of 0.443 (95 % CI 0.273–0.596), and was intermediate for oliguria, defined as urine output <0.5 ml kg−1 h−1, with a path coefficient of 0.495 (95 % CI 0.250–0.864). A path coefficient of −0.229 (95 % CI −0.319 to 0.060) suggested that the risk of AKI during the first year of life did not increase with younger age at surgery.ConclusionsThese findings suggest that cardiac surgery-related AKI in infants is a translation of tubular injury, predominately driven by the cardiopulmonary bypass, and linked to early uNGAL excretion and to post-operative outcome.Trial registrationClinicalTrials.gov identifier NCT01219998. Registered 11 October 2010.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13054-016-1350-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

BackgroundChanges in kidney function, as assessed by early and even small variations in serum creatinine (ΔsCr), affect survival in adults following cardiac surgery but such associations have not been reported in infants. This raises the question of the adequate assessment of kidney function by early ΔsCr in infants undergoing cardiac surgery.MethodologyThe ability of ΔsCr within 2 days of surgery to assess the severity of kidney injury, accounted for by the risk of 30-day mortality, was explored retrospectively in 1019 consecutive neonates and infants. Patients aged ≤ 10 days were analyzed separately because of the physiological improvement in glomerular filtration early after birth. The Kml algorithm, an implementation of k-means for longitudinal data, was used to describe creatinine kinetics, and the receiver operating characteristic and the reclassification methodology to assess discrimination and the predictive ability of the risk of death.ResultsThree clusters of ΔsCr were identified: in 50% of all patients creatinine decreased, in 41.4% it increased slightly, and in 8.6% it rose abruptly. Mortality rates were not significantly different between the first and second clusters, 1.6% [0.0–4.1] vs 5.9% [1.9–10.9], respectively, in patients aged ≤ 10 days, and 1.6% [0.5–3.0] vs 3.8% [1.9–6.0] in older ones. Mortality rates were significantly higher when creatinine rose abruptly, 30.3% [15.1–46.2] in patients aged ≤ 10 days, and 15.1% [5.9–25.5] in older ones. However, only 41.3% of all patients who died had an abrupt increase in creatinine. ΔsCr improved prediction in survivors, but not in patients who died, and did not improve discrimination over a clinical mortality model.ConclusionsThe present results suggest that a postoperative decrease in creatinine represents the normal course in neonates and infants with cardiac surgery, and that early creatinine variations lack sensitivity for the assessment of the severity of kidney injury.