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Acute kidney injury (AKI) is a common pathology, with a high incidence and a high impact when is not well and early recognized.
Even when the definition and importance of an early recognition it’s supposed to be learned in medical school as well as the awareness of AKI in some specific pathologies, like preeclampsia or sepsis, between the non-nephrologist specialists there still is a misconception of the definition, and identification of AKI.
The standardization of the identification of AKI risks and its approach is important to improve healthcare, and perform a precision medicine, centered in the patient. Thus, the first step to achieve it should be identifying the knowledge of AKI.
We perform a survey where the participants, medical students, and physicians (gynecologist, internal medicine, critical care and anesthesiologist) were able to access Google Form thorough scanning a QR code, before an educational session or class about AKI from April to December 2022 in which we evaluate the knowledge of AKI using six questions:
1. What are the kidney functions?
2. What is the definition of AKI?
3. What is the most common cause of AKI?
4. What is the treatment of AKI?
5. What is the classification for AKI?
6. What is the function of a biomarker?
Descriptive statistics were used.
About 200 participants, including medical students and physicians from different hospitals (private and public) and universities, answered the survey.
According to the reported answers, 73.1% of the physicians and 75% of the students knew what the kidneys’ function, 53% of the physicians and 67.9% of the students identified the definition of AKI. Only 53.8% and 64.5%, respectively, knew the actual AKI classification (KDIGO). 11.5% of the physicians and 17.5% of the students knew what a biomarker is for. When asked about the main etiology of AKI, physicians answered that 88.5% were pre-renal and 11.5% post-renal, and the students had a similar response with 83% pre-renal and 14.4% post-renal. The reported answers when asked about the cause of AKI, with nephrotoxicity as an option, the physicians responded that 84.6% is due to hypovolemia, and 11.6% due to glomerulopathy, while the students responded 73.4% hypovolemia and 16.5% nephrotoxicity. 100% of the physicians responded to the management of AKI to correct the underlying disease, while 89.9% of students responded that same answer.
There is a big gap of knowledge in AKI recognition, diagnosis, and proper management. Thus, it is important to use technology, teamwork, and interdisciplinary educational meetings or conferences interactions as opportunities to explore the knowledge around AKI in other medical areas. The previous to achieve an improvement in the approach.
To point out, unfortunately, nephrotoxicity continues to be an unidentified cause in the diagnostic approach of AKI, even when is one of the most common causes. Collectively, these questions let us know that AKI concepts need further recognition by physicians and the needs of concept actualization and a continual support from the nephrologist to create and develop more actions regarding “AKI knowledge”.