And somehow in your two functioning brain cells you think predicting damage rather than preventing such damage was worthwhile research?
Dynamic nomogram for predicting acute kidney injury in patients with acute ischemic stroke: A retrospective study
Ganggui Zhu
Zaixiang Fu
Taian Jin
Xiaohui Xu3, 
Lingxin Cai- 1Department of Neurosurgery, Hangzhou First People's Hospital, School of Medicine, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China
- 2Department of Neurosurgery, The Second Affiliated Hospital, School of Medicine, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China
- 3Department of Neurosurgery, The Fourth Affiliated Hospital, School of Medicine, Zhejiang University, Yiwu, China
Background: This study sought to develop and validate a dynamic nomogram chart to assess the risk of acute kidney injury (AKI) in patients with acute ischemic stroke (AIS).
Methods: These data were drawn from the Medical Information Mart for Intensive Care III (MIMIC-III) database, which collects 47 clinical indicators of patients after admission to the hospital. The primary outcome indicator was the occurrence of AKI within 48 h of intensive care unit (ICU) admission. Independent risk factors for AKI were screened from the training set using univariate and multifactorial logistic regression analyses. Multiple logistic regression models were developed, and nomograms were plotted and validated in an internal validation set. Based on the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve, calibration curve, and decision curve analysis (DCA) to estimate the performance of this nomogram.
Results: Nomogram indicators include blood urea nitrogen (BUN), creatinine, red blood cell distribution width (RDW), heart rate (HR), Oxford Acute Severity of Illness Score (OASIS), the history of congestive heart failure (CHF), the use of vancomycin, contrast agent, and mannitol. The predictive model displayed well discrimination with the area under the ROC curve values of 0.8529 and 0.8598 for the training set and the validator, respectively. Calibration curves revealed favorable concordance between the actual and predicted incidence of AKI (p > 0.05). DCA indicates the excellent net clinical benefit of nomogram in predicting AKI.
Conclusion: In summary, we explored the incidence of AKI in patients with AIS during ICU stay and developed a predictive model to help clinical decision-making.
Introduction
Stroke remains the second most common disease threatening humans worldwide (1). Stroke places a tremendous burden on patients, families, and society, especially in developing countries (2). The American Heart Association and the American Stroke Association project that the total medical cost of stroke will reach $1,841 billion from 2012 to 2030 (3). Ischemic stroke, usually caused by a blood clot blocking an artery in the brain, is the leading type of stroke (4). Tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) is the only drug currently approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of ischemic strokes. Patients outside of the time window for tPA use may be treated with other therapies, such as thrombectomy, anticoagulants, blood pressure-lowering, and cholesterol-lowering drugs. Nevertheless, the effectiveness of treatment for ischemic stroke is unsatisfactory. Stroke kills ~6 million people each year, accounting for more than 10% of all deaths (5). Therefore, in the management of ischemic stroke, early identification of patients who may have a poor prognosis and timely intervention is important to improve the quality of patient survival later in life.
Acute kidney injury (AKI) is a common condition in critically ill patients and occurs in ~30–50% of intensive care unit (ICU) patients (6). High mortality is one of its characteristics, with ~20–25% of patients dying during hospitalization (7, 8). AKI manifests itself as a dramatic deterioration of renal function and a decrease in urine output, which leads to water and electrolyte disturbances and high circulating blood volume, resulting in a series of negative effects on other organs (9). After the stroke, activation of the sympathetic nervous system, the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone pathway impairs the self-regulatory function of the kidney (10). Moreover, the immune response induced by stroke leads to a massive release of inflammatory factors, resulting in decreased renal function (11). Therefore, early identification, recognition, and intervention can reduce the probability of AKI and slow down its progression (12).
However, there are no validated clinical models to predict the occurrence of AKI in patients with acute ischemic stroke (AIS). Therefore, there is a need to effectively predict the occurrence of AKI or screen for potential risk factors to guide early clinical intervention to improve prognosis. Based on several key variables and parameters, nomograms, especially dynamic nomograms, provide a powerful and easy-to-use method to predict the outcomes of individual events (13–16). The main objective of this study was to identify factors that independently predict the occurrence of AKI in patients with AIS. The patient cohort and factors were selected from the Medical Information Mart for Intensive Care III (MIMIC-III) database, and the nomogram was concurrently developed to predict the incidence of AKI in the AIS population during ICU (17).
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