Acute kidney injury and aorta-related mortality during open surgery of the abdominal aorta with suprarenal clamping using different renal protection strategies.

Objectives: The aim was to evaluate the incidence of acute kidney injury in patients treated with open surgical repair and suprarenal cross-clamp comparing no-perfusion strategy versus the renal perfusion with the histidine-tryptophan-ketoglutarate solution.

Methods: It is a physician-initiated, multicentre, retrospective observational study including patients treated with open surgical repair for abdominal aortic aneurysm between 1 January 2015 and 31 December 2021. Patients already on dialysis were excluded from the final analysis. A coarsened exact match identified 2 cohorts: no-perfusion strategy versus renal perfusion with the histidine-tryptophan-ketoglutarate solution. Primary outcomes were acute kidney injury incidence and survival at 30 day. Secondary outcomes were freedom from haemodialysis and survival at 1 year.

Results: We analysed 125 (28.7%) patients: 63 (14.5%) who did not receive renal perfusion and 62 (14.2%) who received the histidine-tryptophan-ketoglutarate perfusion. At 30 day, acute kidney injury rate (37.6%) was not different between the 2 groups [n = 24 (38.7%) vs 23 (36.5%); OR: 1.1, P = 0.855]. At 30 day, acute kidney injury development was associated with aneurysm extent (pararenal, OR: 2.28, 95% CI: 1.031-5.031, P = 0.042) and total time of intervention (threshold: 365 min, OR: 1.008, 95% CI: 1.003-1.012, P = 0.001). At 1 year, postoperative acute kidney injury did not impact mortality (OR: 3.4, P = 0.556), and freedom from haemodialysis was 100%.

Conclusions: Postoperative acute kidney injury remains high at nearly 38%, but it did not impact on freedom from haemodialysis at 1 year as well as on overall survival.