Nomogram to predict the risk of septic acute kidney injury in the first 24 h of admission: an analysis of intensive care unit data

Background: Acute kidney injury (AKI) is a significant cause of morbidity and mortality, especially in sepsis patients. Early prediction of AKI can help physicians determine the appropriate intervention, and thus, improve the outcome. This study aimed to develop a nomogram to predict the risk of AKI in sepsis patients (S-AKI) in the initial 24 h following admission. Methods: Sepsis patients with AKI who met the Sepsis 3.0 criteria and Kidney Disease: Improving Global Outcomes criteria in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology critical care database, Medical Information Mart for Intensive Care (MIMIC-III), were identified for analysis. Data were analyzed using multiple logistic regression, and the performance of the proposed nomogram was evaluated based on Harrell's concordance index (C-index) and the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve. Results: We included 2917 patients in the analysis; 1167 of 2042 patients (57.14%) and 469 of 875 patients (53.6%) had AKI in the training and validation cohorts, respectively. The predictive factors identified by multivariate logistic regression were blood urea nitrogen level, infusion volume, lactate level, weight, blood chloride level, body temperature, and age. With the incorporation of these factors, our model had well-fitted calibration curves and achieved good C-indexes of 0.80 [95% confidence interval (CI): 0.78-0.82] and 0.79 (95% CI: 0.76-0.82) in predicting S-AKI in the training and validation cohorts, respectively. Conclusion: The proposed nomogram effectively predicted AKI risk in sepsis patients admitted to the intensive care unit in the first 24 h.