Assessment of Urinary NGAL to Predict AKI in Children Receiving Multiple Nephrotoxic Medications

Nephrotoxic medication (NTMx) exposure is one of the most commonly cited causes of acute kidney injury (AKI) in hospitalized children, and is the primary cause of AKI in 16% of cases. Through initial work at Cincinnati Children's Medical Center, NTMx exposure was found to be potentially modifiable and the associated AKI is an avoidable adverse safety event. Currently, only serum Creatinine monitoring is available to monitor for NTMx-associated AKI. The hypotheses of this NINJA NGAL study are that (1) urine NGAL is highly sensitive to detect NTMx-associated AKI, and (2) Bedside test of urine from high risk NTMx-exposed patients are adequate and reliable compared to urine NGAL measured from the clinical platform.