THURSDAY, Sept. 11 (HealthDay News) -- Hospitalized patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) experience an increase in both surgical and medical adverse events compared to patients without CKD, according to a report published online Sept. 5 in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.
Stephen L. Seliger, M.D., of the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore, and colleagues examined whether or not CKD patients experience more adverse events during hospitalization by comparing 13 patient safety indicators in patients with and without CKD in a Veteran's Health Administration (VHA) database.
Overall, 29 percent of patients had a diagnosis of CKD. Among hospitalized surgical patients with CKD compared to hospitalized patients without CKD, complications of anesthesia, postoperative hip fracture, postoperative physiologic or metabolic derangement, and postoperative respiratory failure were 1.6, 4.89, 4.0, and 1.37 times more common, respectively, the researchers report. Patients with CKD were 2.33 times more likely than patients without CKD to develop an infection during hospitalization and 1.53 times more likely to die from a low-mortality risk diagnosis than those without CKD, the report indicates. The authors note that as pre-admission renal function decreased, adverse events became significantly more common.
"In conclusion, the presence of CKD was associated with a greater risk for adverse patient safety events in hospitalized patients in the VHA," the authors write. "Further investigation is needed to examine this association in other health care systems and to define more specific safety measures, with the goal of improving patient safety for patients with CKD."
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