Significance of early detection of acute kidney function worsening among outpatients having CKD using automatic calculation system for the rate of eGFR decline.

BACKGROUND: To retard progression of chronic kidney disease (CKD) and reduce end-stage kidney disease, it is important to detect acute kidney function worsening on CKD (AW-CKD) immediately and bring back their kidney functions to baselines by appropriate treatment. However, in general outpatient practice, it is difficult to detect the change in the slope of estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR).

METHODS: We made automatic calculation system for the rate of eGFR decline (ΔeGFR), and retrospectively observed the situation of AW-CKD among outpatients, who had visited all clinical departments of Steel Memorial Hirohata Hospital between May and August 2016, using the system. The patients with ΔeGFR over 20 mL/min/1.73 m2 /year were classified into "Detected cases", who were immediately detected AW-CKD by the attending physicians, and "Not detected cases". For each stratum of ΔeGFR, subsequent eGFR recovery rates between two groups were compared.

RESULTS: Among 6719 outpatients, 865 had CKD stages G3-5 and of which 196 had ΔeGFR over 20 mL/min/1.73 m2 /year. We revealed that, in cases of ΔeGFR over 30 mL/min/1.73 m2 /year, eGFR recovery rates in "Detected cases" were significantly higher than those in "Not detected cases" (103.2 vs 43.9%, p < 0.001). There were no differences in the clinical backgrounds except kidney function between two groups.

CONCLUSION: In general outpatient practice, a substantial number of AW-CKD was latent. It is expected to improve kidney prognoses of outpatients having CKD through immediately detecting the patients, whose ΔeGFR over 30 mL/min/1.73 m2 /year using the system and alerting the attending physicians on the electronic medical record.