An assessment of the RIFLE criteria for acute renal failure in critically ill HIV-infected patients

Acute renal failure is common among hospitalized patients with HIV infection, particularly in the intensive care unit (ICU) setting, and increases mortality. Recently, the Acute Dialysis and Quality Initiative (ADQI) group [1] formulated a new classification for acute renal failure the Risk, Injury, Failure, Loss, and End-stage kidney disease (RIFLE) classification that defines three grades of severity class R (risk), class F (failure), and class I (injury) and two outcome classes loss and end-stage kidney disease. Some studies [2,3] have applied the RIFLE criteria in hospitalized patients, particularly in ICU patients, but the clinical ability of these criteria to predict outcome of ICU HIV-infected patients has not yet been assessed. We sought to evaluate retrospectively the ability of the RIFLE criteria (Table 1) to predict outcome of the HIV-infected patients admitted to the Infectious Diseases ICU of our Hospital (Hospital de Santa Maria, Lisbon, Portugal) between January 2002 and June 2006. Chronic kidney disease patients receiving dialysis were excluded from the analysis. Mortality was assessed at day 60 [1]. We evaluated 97 HIV-infected patients (mean age 42.7 ± 12.2 years; 77 male, 69 Caucasian). According to RIFLE, 46 patients (47.4%; mean age 43.2 ± 11.08 years, P = not significant; 39 male, P = not significant; 28 Caucasian, P = not significant) had some degree of acute renal dysfunction. Of these, 12 patients (26%) were class R, 9 patients (19.5%) were class I, and 25 patients (54.3%) were class F; these patients did not differ in terms of age, gender, race, type of HIV, stage of HIV infection, highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART), comorbidity, and severity of illness. In all cases, maximum RIFLE occurred within the first week of hospitalization. Letter An assessment of the RIFLE criteria for acute renal failure in critically ill HIV-infected patients José António Lopes1, Joana Fernandes2, Sofia Jorge1, José Neves2, Francisco Antunes2 and Mateus Martins Prata1