Appropriate blood component therapy can reduce postcardiac surgery acute kidney injury through packed cell transfusion reduction.

BACKGROUND: Acute kidney injury (AKI) can happen due to different factors such as anemia. Packed cell (PC) transfusion is an important cause of AKI occurrence. The aim of the study is to investigate whether appropriate blood component (BC) therapy can reduce blood transfusion and it would result in AKI decreasing.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: We conducted a cohort study of 1388 patients who underwent cardiac surgery in one university hospital. A serum creatinine higher than 2 mg/dl, renal disease history, renal replacement therapy (chronic dialysis) were our exclusion criteria.

RESULTS: From our 1088 samples, 701 (64.43%) patients had normal kidney function, 277 (25.45%) were in the AKI-1 group, 84 (7.72%) had an AKI-2 function, and the rest of patients were classified as end stage. A mean of more than three PC units were transfused for the second and third stage of AKI, which was significantly higher than other AKI groups ( P = 0.009); this higher demand of blood product was also true about the fresh frozen plasma, platelet, and fibrinogen. However, there were no needs of fibrinogen in the patients with normal kidney function. The cardiopulmonary bypass time had an average of 142 ± 24.12, which obviously was higher than other groups ( P = 0.032). Total mortality rate was 14 out of 1088 (1.28%), and expiration among the AKI stages 2 and 3 was meaningfully ( P = 0.001) more than the other groups.

CONCLUSION: A more occurrence of AKI reported for the patients who have taken more units of blood. However, BC indicated to be safer for compensating blood loss because of low AKI occurrence among our patients.