Outcomes, risk factors and health burden of contrast-induced acute kidney injury: an observational study of one million hospitalizations with image-guided cardiovascular procedures

The use of iodinated contrast media (ICM) improves the visualization of blood vessels during image-guided procedures [1]. However, it may lead to iatrogenic renal injury, causing contrast-induced (CI) acute kidney injury (AKI).

AKI, formerly known as acute renal failure, is common in hospitalized patients and is strongly associated with morbidity and mortality. It is a complex syndrome that may arise in response to various aetiologies, such as the use of nephrotoxic drugs.

CI-AKI is the third most common cause of AKI in hospitals, after functional and medicine-related causes [2]. Depending on the definition, the population and the procedure studied, CI-AKI frequencies reported in the literature range from 1.5 to 15 % [3‐7]. In most patients involved, serum creatinine returns to normal values within 2 weeks [8]. However, a subset of this population will need renal replacement therapy with associated increased hospitalization times and costs, and increased mortality [9, 10].

Many individual risk factors for the development of CI-AKI have been reported [9‐15], predominant are chronic kidney disease, diabetes mellitus, congestive heart failure and age over 70 years.

The frequency of CI-AKI was expected to decrease with the use of low-osmolar ICM. In order to provide insights on the current state of this complication to health professionals and authorities, we conducted a cross-sectional retrospective population-based study using hospital data. The objective was to estimate the frequency of CI-AKI among hospitalized patients who underwent image-guided cardiovascular procedures, to quantify the effect of risk factors on CI-AKI occurrence and to assess the relative organizational and economic burdens.

To the best of our knowledge, this is the largest study to estimate the frequency and health burden of CI-AKI occurring after image-guided cardiovascular interventions. Furthermore, this is the first available data on the general French population. Indeed, the few studies that have reported this complication in France focused on units treating severe cases, such as intensive care units [16, 17].

Using a national claims database to obtain extensive real-life data, we identified more than 1 million hospitalizations involving an image-guided cardiovascular procedure requiring ICM administration over a 2-year period. This data sample allowed us to obtain robust results in the absence of important data such as creatinine results.

The frequency of suspected CI-AKI was 3.1 % in our study for the 1,047,329 hospitalizations including an image-guide procedure using ICM, which represents a substantial proportion. The reported frequencies of suspected CI-AKI vary widely in the literature, ranging from 1.5 to 15 % [3‐7], depending on the patient population and baseline risk factors. Furthermore, as with any clinical event, the frequency also varies depending on the criteria by which it is defined. Differences in the definitions used make it difficult to compare results of clinical studies (Table 3). CI-AKI is classically defined in the recent literature as a rise in serum creatinine occurring within the first 24 h after contrast exposure and peaking up to 5 days afterward. In most instances, the rise in serum creatinine is expressed either in absolute terms (0.5–1.0 mg/dL; 44.2–88.4 μmol/L) or as a proportional rise in serum creatinine of 25 or 50 % above the baseline value.

Renal replacement therapy was required in 0.6 % of hospitalizations, while the frequency of suspected CI-AKI requiring renal replacement therapy varies from 0.5 to 1 % in the literature [9, 18‐20].

Our results come from a large and extensive database including all types of patients, with an extensive selection of image-guided cardiovascular procedures using ICM, thus allowing assessment of patients at all levels of severity.

The frequency of suspected CI-AKI was higher in hospitalizations involving patients with comorbidities (Fig. 1) and reached 45.4 % in hospitalizations with cardiogenic shock onset. This latter event was the greatest risk factor in our multivariable analysis with an OR of 20.5. Patients with chronic kidney disease or acute heart failure, and those who were admitted via emergency departments, had around twice the risk of developing CI-AKI.

CI-AKI was associated with extremely high in-hospital mortality of 21.3 %. The prognosis was even worse if the suspected CI-AKI required renal replacement therapy, with an in-hospital mortality reaching 52.3 %. Even though prior studies have reported mortality of 7 % for suspected CI-AKI without renal replacement therapy and 35 % for suspected CI-AKI requiring renal replacement therapy [9], but figures similar to ours have been reported in large retrospective cohort studies [10, 13, 21].

Surprisingly, mortality was lower during hospitalizations of patients with comorbidities than during those without (Fig. 3) despite a higher suspected CI-AKI frequency in these populations. One possible explanation for this lower mortality is the close monitoring of patients with important risk factors, leading to rapid detection and management of suspected CI-AKI. Furthermore, as it was not possible to study all of the confounding risks reported by Mehran et al., such as hypotension, contrast volume and haematocrit [22], the mortality results should be interpreted cautiously. Also, we could not analyse whether patients received non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs or were hyperglycaemic or volume depleted.

CI-AKI events were accompanied by an extreme increase in mean length of hospitalization (+15.8 days) and cost (+€12,413). The burden of this complication was higher when the suspected CI-AKI required renal replacement therapy, which increased the length of stay by 28.4 days and the cost by €28,627 compared with no CI-AKI. An economic analysis of the direct costs associated with CI-AKI has been conducted recently in the United States [23] – this study calculated the mean extra cost of CI-AKI onset to be $10,345 for the hospitalization in question and $11,812 for 1 year. The incidence data and results were calculated using a systematic search of the literature, and combined with unit costs, also obtained from the literature, using a decision-based analytical model. In our study, over the 2-year study period, it was estimated that onset of suspected CI-AKI during 1,047,329 hospitalizations led to additional overall expenditure for French Health Insurance of €401M.

Our study had several limitations, the majority of which are intrinsically linked to the PMSI database. This database is used in hospitals for budgetary reasons, and was not developed for epidemiological studies. Consequently, the data do not include results of clinical or biological testing. The absence of creatinine data represents the biggest limitation of our study. Therefore, to identify cases of suspected CI-AKI we selected, with the assistance of a Department of Medical Information doctor, the codes used in practice when this complication appears. Although the coding used to be poor in the early 2000’s, the quality has been widely improved in the past few years, showing high sensitivity and positive predictive value [24]. Furthermore, a selection of image-guided procedures usually requiring ICM administration was approved by a committee of experts. As the administration is not mandatory for all procedures selected and could not been verified, we conducted a secondary analysis on a restricted selection of image-guided cardiac procedures with mandatory use of ICM (DDQH and DGQH; Appendix 1). The results of this secondary analysis were similar to the main analysis and allowed us to validate the robustness of our results.

The PMSI database only allows observation of suspected CI-AKI with onset during hospitalization. However, CI-AKI onset can be up to 72 h after ICM administration and patients who are not considered at risk are often not hospitalized for such a long duration after the procedure. It is therefore possible that post-hospital events have not been taken into account. Nevertheless, as the mean length of hospitalization in this study was 4.7 days for patients without CI-AKI, we have assumed that the great majority of patients would still have been in hospital at the time of suspected CI-AKI onset, if it occurred.

Moreover, the PMSI database does not allow us to find the exact chronology of onset events during the hospitalization. Therefore, we have assumed that if, during a hospitalization that included a procedure requiring ICM administration, the patient presented with AKI, then the two events were related. However, we cannot state with certainty that all cases of AKI occurring in patients having ICM were attributed to CI-AKI. All cases of AKI, in the wider sense, have been taken into account and considered as suspected CI-AKI in this study. Nevertheless, some could be associated with cardiogenic shock or underlying conditions. This is, however, a limitation for most CI-AKI analyses as the accountability of ICM is often difficult to establish, even in clinical practice, as renal injury is multifactorial [25]. Furthermore, we observed cardiogenic shock in only 0.2 % of all hospitalizations, therefore, even if these events induced an AKI unrelated to ICM, it would not significantly impact our results. However, we note that we could not extract hypotension or use of potentially nephrotoxic agents (e.g. antibiotics or non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs) from the database, which are important potential causes of AKI.

This is the largest population-based study that has estimated the frequency and health burden of suspected CI-AKI occurring after image-guided cardiovascular procedures. We have shown that this iatrogenic complication remains of high concern despite prevention efforts and contrast media product improvement. In this study, suspected CI-AKI was associated with particularly high mortality, significantly extended hospital length of stay, and additional costs reaching a total of €200M per year. Even though results should be interpreted cautiously due to limitations regarding absence of creatinine data and the impossibility to identify all risk factors of CI-AKI, we believe they are strengthened by the extremely large sample used. Besides, they are informative on the economic burden of CI-AKI when data are scarce.

CI-AKI occurred in 3.1 % of image-guided cardiovascular procedures.

CI-AKI was associated with increased mortality.

CI-AKI was associated with significant hospital costs due to increased length of stay.