Kidney injury: A serious risk to the health and survival of today's soldiers
Acute kidney injury (AKI), an abrupt or rapid decline in kidney function, is a serious and increasingly prevalent condition. Little information has been available about how common or how severe AKI is in military personnel who are injured during combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. A new study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Clinical Journal of the American Society Nephrology (CJASN) investigates this question in those burned during combat.
Captain Ian Stewart, MD, USAF (San Antonio Military Medical Center, Fort Sam Houston) and his colleagues examined military casualties who were evacuated from Iraq and Afghanistan to burn units. When they used two different classification systems for AKI, the researchers found that AKI prevalence rates were 23.8% (according to one system) and 29.9% (according to the other) among 692 evacuated casualties. Patients with AKI were much more likely to die than patients without AKI: the death rates among patients with moderate and severe AKI were 21.4% to 33.3% and 62.5% to 65.1%, respectively, compared with 0.2% among patients without AKI.
The majority of patients (57.6%) were diagnosed with AKI when they were admitted to the hospital, implying that factors related to combat may be responsible. Conversely, for patients who developed AKI after the first week (17.6%), complications from their hospitalization were likely the cause. Patients in the intermediate time range (24.8%) probably had some combination of factors.
"Our research shows that if a wounded warrior develops kidney damage, he or she is at an increased risk of dying," said Dr. Stewart. "By preventing or modifying kidney injury, we may be able to improve survival in military personnel with burns and/or other traumatic injury," he added. Additional studies are needed to test whether intervening to reduce AKI will save lives.
Provided by
American Society of Nephrology
-
Kidney injury puts elderly individuals at high risk for developing serious kidney disease
Nov 19, 2008 |
not rated yet |
0
-
Kidney injury in hospital increases long-term risk of death
Dec 17, 2009 |
not rated yet |
0
-
Kidney injury prevention may be possible: Watch for the warning signs
Jul 29, 2010 |
not rated yet |
0
-
Kidney injury linked to greater risk of death among pneumonia patients
Mar 02, 2010 |
not rated yet |
0
-
Weekend hospital admissions are higher risk for patients with acute kidney injury
Apr 15, 2010 |
not rated yet |
0
-
Motion perception revisited: High Phi effect challenges established motion perception assumptions
Apr 23, 2013 |
3 / 5 (2) |
2
-
Anything you can do I can do better: Neuromolecular foundations of the superiority illusion (Update)
Apr 02, 2013 |
4.5 / 5 (11) |
5
-
The visual system as economist: Neural resource allocation in visual adaptation
Mar 30, 2013 |
5 / 5 (2) |
9
-
Separate lives: Neuronal and organismal lifespans decoupled
Mar 27, 2013 |
4.9 / 5 (8) |
0
-
Sizing things up: The evolutionary neurobiology of scale invariance
Feb 28, 2013 |
4.8 / 5 (10) |
14
-
Classical and Quantum Mechanics via Lie algebras
Apr 15, 2011
- More from Physics Forums - Independent Research
More news stories
Salt consumption in India: The need for data to initiate population-based prevention efforts
(Medical Xpress)—International researchers are studying the salt intake of Indian adults to provide vital new data to aid the development of a national salt reduction strategy.
Health
53 minutes ago |
not rated yet |
0
Holding drivers' attention
Each day, an average of nine people are killed in the United States and more than 1,000 injured by drivers doing something other than driving.
Health
1 hour ago |
not rated yet |
0
Bed sharing with parents increases risk of cot death fivefold
Bed sharing with parents is linked to a fivefold increased risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), even when the parents are non-smokers and the mother has not been drinking alcohol and does not use illegal drugs, according ...
Health
12 hours ago |
1.3 / 5 (3) |
0
Many people with implantable defibrillators can participate in vigorous sports
Many people with implantable defibrillators can safely participate in vigorous sports according to new research in the American Heart Association journal Circulation.
Health
13 hours ago |
not rated yet |
0
Gym class reduces probability of obesity, study finds for first time
Little is known about the effect of physical education (PE) on child weight, but a new study from Cornell University finds that increasing the amount of time that elementary schoolchildren spent in gym class reduces the probability ...
Health
15 hours ago |
not rated yet |
0
Anti-CD47 antibody may offer new route to successful cancer vaccination
(Medical Xpress)—Scientists at the School of Medicine have shown that their previously identified therapeutic approach to fight cancer via immune cells called macrophages also prompts the disease-fighting killer T cells ...
Biomarker trio predicts near-term heart risk
(Medical Xpress)—Cardiologists have identified a trio of biomarkers that may predict which patients with heart disease have a high risk of heart attack or death in the next two years.
Primary care docs should play role in kids' dental health, experts say
(HealthDay)—When it comes to the care of your children's teeth, dentists aren't the only experts who can help.
New theory offers clues to vital 'repair and maintenance' role of sleep
(Medical Xpress)—We spend about a third of our life asleep, but why we need to do so remains a mystery. In a recent publication, researchers at University of Surrey and University College London suggest a new hypothesis, ...
Eyes on the sun: Child sunshine exposure and eye development
(Medical Xpress)—Exposure to sunshine as a small child is crucial to the development of a healthy eye according to results of long-term myopia study conducted by University of Sydney researchers.
ATS: Early prone positioning reduces mortality in ARDS
(HealthDay)—For patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), prolonged prone positioning during mechanical ventilation is associated with significantly reduced mortality at 28 and 90 days, ...