The role of the clinical pharmacist in the prevention of drug-induced acute kidney injury in the intensive care unit

What is known and objective: Acute kidney injury (AKI) is a disorder that is commonly seen in patients in the intensive care unit (ICU) and has a detrimental impact on the patients' clinical prognosis. Although a variety of factors contribute to the development of AKI in patients, drug-induced AKI is a common occurrence in the ICU. With the widespread availability of clinical pharmacy services, the clinical pharmacist's consultation service to the healthcare team aids in the resolution of drug-related issues and the enhancement of therapeutic outcomes. The involvement of a clinical pharmacist in the ICU team is expected to minimize the incidence of drug-induced AKI and enhance therapeutic results. Therefore, the goal of our study was to demonstrate the impact of having a clinical pharmacist on the occurrence, stages, and treatment of AKI.

Methods: The study included two patient groups: intervention (n = 75) (IG) and control (n = 75) (CG) groups. The clinical pharmacist has made recommendations to the ICU team regarding the treatment of IG patients on drug selection, drug administration routes, drug dose adjustment, drug-drug interactions, drug-food or nutritional solution interactions, drug side effect management, and drug incompatibility. No interventions were provided by the clinical pharmacist in the CG patients. The clinical pharmacist visited patients regularly and noted the laboratory findings and pharmacological treatments of patients in the study groups on the patient follow-up forms. The obtained data of IG and CG were compared and statistical methods were used to assess them.

Results and discussion: According to our findings, AKI was found to be more common in CG than in IG (p < 0.05). Stage 1 was shown to be the most common AKI stage in the patients (p > 0.05). The gap between the patients' highest Cr and basal sCr values was less in IG (p < 0.05). When the association between reasons for ICU admission and AKI was investigated, pulmonary edema and acute respiratory failure were found to have a significant and positive relationship with AKI (p < 0.05). Furthermore, it was shown that patients with diabetes and cancer comorbidities were the most vulnerable to developing AKI (p < 0.05). Antibiotics, anaesthetics, and cardiovascular system medication categories were found to have a significant and positive correlation with AKI in patients (p < 0.05). Also, it was revealed that the usage of vancomycin, colistin, ampicillin-sulbactam, clarithromycin, ceftriaxone, midazolam, and dexketoprofen caused AKI (p < 0.05).

What is new and conclusion: Our findings demonstrate that if a clinical pharmacist is included in the ICU team and provides consultation services to the ICU team regarding patient treatment by performing regular patient follow-up, the incidence of AKI in patients can be minimized and therapeutic outcomes can be improved.