Acute Kidney Injury (AKI) refers to a sudden decline in the kidney's renal filtration function. According to research, it is found in 15% of hospitalized patients and it makes the possibility of a patient dying ten times higher. Even with such statistics available, AKI is neither well-monitored nor consistently treated. Several health systems have come up with a system responsible for giving an automated alert whenever laboratory results indicate AKI. The alert shows up in the patient’s electronic health record, particularly when there is a swift rise in creatinine (a chemical waste product generated by muscles in the blood).
As a new development in the market of Acute Kidney Injury Therapeutics, a study has brought forward that Electronic alert systems may not have any benefit towards a person’s risk of death. So far, it was believed in the medical field that the alerts were beneficial for a patient’s health. However, the new study has stated that there is absolutely no evidence that these alerts are fruitful for a patient.
Researchers looked at 6,030 adult in-patients suffering from AKI. They then measured their AKI progression and noted if the patients needed dialysis or died within 14 days. For the benefit of the study, half of the patients’ providers could receive pop-up alerts, while for others, it was kept switched off. The team discovered that even when the alert was present, it led to modest changes in the provider’s behavior. This included more creatinine measurements, increased documentation of a patient’s AKI, and additional urinalysis tests. However, nothing made a difference in the clinical outcomes. The patients who had the system of emergency alerts were likely to have worsening AKI-related symptoms, thus need dialysis; otherwise, they die.
What was more distressful was the researcher’s discovery that health outcomes of those whose records did include AKI alert were worse than those who didn’t. There was a pattern of significantly higher death rate, i.e., 15.6% in an alert group compared with 8.6% in the usual care group, which relays evidence of harm.
The researchers concluded that a dire need to start from the beginning to understand which part of the system needs to be changed or what is causing the problem. The provider behaviors need to be looked at deeply. For instance, things like if they are giving too much fluid or getting distracted needs to be considered. For now, the team does not have the idea where the problem for bad outcomes lies, but the study shows therequirement to take this task further to find how the alert system can be made better for patients suffering from AKI.