Objective:

To define the prevalence and associated factors of acute renal injury in pregnancy (PR-AKI) in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of the Women’s Hospital, Morelia, Michoacán, Mexico.

Material and methods:

Retrospective, cross-sectional and descriptive study from January 2013-August 2018. Ambit: Intensive Care Unit of the Women’s Hospital. Patients: We reviewed 213 files of complicated obstetric patients. Inclusion criteria: complicated obstetric patients that merit admission to the ICU, patients who met criteria for LRA. Exclusion criteria: patients with chronic.

Main variables of interest: Complicated obstetric patients (preeclampsia, eclampsia, HELLP syndrome, hemorrhagic shock and sepsis). It was investigated if they developed PR-AKI.

Results:

154 complicated obstetric patients were included; an average of 25.6p ± 1.6 per year. 36% had a diagnosis of eclampsia; 35.3% pre-eclampsia; 29.3% HELLP syndrome; 19.3% obstetric hemorrhage, 10% sepsis. Association of PR-AKI with HELLP syndrome (p = 0.0003) and pre-eclampsia (p = 0.01) was demonstrated.

A subdiagnosis of 36.7% was found when searching for PR-AKI using the RIFLE and AKI criteria (p = 0.000007). Of the patients with PR-AKI grade 3, 20% required continuous renal replacement therapy.

Conclusions:

Renal injury associated with complicated pregnancy has a prevalence of 6.7%. The complications that most develop PR-AKI are HELLP syndrome and preeclampsia. PR-AKI is underdiagnosed.