Acute kidney injury

[Ernesto]

Acute kidney injury is a rapid (days to weeks) decline in the kidneys’ ability to filter metabolic waste products from the blood.

Causes include conditions that decrease blood flow to the kidneys, that damage the kidneys themselves, or that block drainage of urine from the kidneys.
Symptoms may include swelling, nausea, fatigue, itching, difficulty breathing, and symptoms of the disorder that caused the acute kidney injury.
Serious complications include heart failure and high levels of potassium in the blood.
Diagnosis is with blood and urine tests and usually imaging studies.
Treatment involves correcting the cause of acute kidney injury and sometimes doing dialysis.

(See also Overview of Kidney Failure.)
Acute kidney injury can result from any condition that decreases the blood supply to the kidneys, any disease or toxic substances (also called toxins) affecting the kidneys themselves, or any condition that obstructs urine flow anywhere along the urinary tract.
In many people, no cause of acute kidney injury can be identified.
If both kidneys function normally, damage to one kidney (for example, due to blockage by a kidney stone) does not usually cause major problems because the remaining good kidney can compensate and usually maintain near-normal laboratory measurements of kidney function. Thus, acute kidney injury may be hard for doctors to detect. For acute kidney injury to cause significant problems, usually both kidneys must be damaged or function abnormally.