The role of acute kidney injury duration in clinical practice

Acute kidney injury (AKI) can be caused by various factors such as toxins, ischemia, sepsis, obstructive uropathy, and others. Currently, there are two main classification systems that are used for determination of AKI severity in clinical practice, and these are the Risk/Injury/Failure/Loss/End-stage (RIFLE) criteria and Acute Kidney Injury Network (AKIN) criteria. Both have implemented the rise of creatinine level and decreased in urine output as two major factors in determining the severity of AKI and act as a guide to start renal replacement therapy (RRT). However, none of the classification systems have implicated AKI duration as another dimension for defining the true severity of kidney dysfunction.