On Thursday a group of U.S researcher has reported, over a third of the patients treated of COVID-19, in a New York medical system, developed acute kidney injury, and nearly 15 percent of them needed dialysis. This study was conducted by a team at Northwell Health, which happens to be the largest health service provider in the state of New York.
“We found in the first 5,449 patients admitted, 36.6% developed acute kidney injury,” said study co-author Dr. Kenar Jhaveri, associated chief of nephrology at Hofstra/Northwell in Great Neck, New York, whose findings were published in the journal Kidney International.
Till date, this was the largest study, which takes a look at the kidney injury in COVID-19 patients. As many hospitals are currently flooded with waves of COVID-19 patient, so this study might be helpful, believes Javeri. Many have noted, the increased kidney failure rates amongst the COVID-19 patients. Once Javeri and his colleagues set out to quantify it by combing through medical records of 5,449 COVID-19 patients hospitalized between March 1 and April 5. They found out, that as much as 37.3 percent patient arriving at the hospital with failing kidneys, or developing the condition within the first 24 hours of the admission. However, in many cases kidney failures occurred around the time severely ill patients needed to be kept on a ventilator.
Amongst the 1000 patients who were needed to kept in ventilators, about 90 percent of them developed acute kidney failure.
“It’s not specific to COVID-19. It’s more related to how sick you are,” Javeri said in his statement.
However, knowing the proportion of patients at risk for this condition could help hospitals as they plan equipment and staffing needed for future coronavirus surges, he added.
