Acute Kidney Injury in Neonates with Perinatal Asphyxia in a Tertiary Care Hospital of Nepal: a cross-sectional study.

Background Renal involvement is the most common form of systemic complication in neonates with perinatal asphyxia. Acute Kidney Injury (AKI) can be oliguric or non oliguric. There is no consensus on the definition of acute kidney injury in neonates, which makes early diagnosis and management difficult. Acute kidney injury leads to significant morbidity and mortality in neonates. Objective Current study aims to explore the prevalence of Acute Kidney Injury in Neonates with perinatal asphyxia and its relation to the severity of Hypoxic Ischemic Encephalopathy (HIE). Method A single-center, retrospective, cross-sectional study was carried out to analyze the cases of perinatal asphyxia in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) and Neonatal Ward (NNW) for a period of three years (September 2020 to August 2023) in a tertiary care center. The study analyzed 195 neonates with perinatal asphyxia and Hypoxic Ischemic Encephalopathy (HIE). Data analysis was done using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 25. Descriptive statistics(mean ± SD for continuous variables; percentages for categorical variables) and chi-square test (to compare categorical associations) were applied. The prevalence of acute kidney injury and its relation to grades of HIE were determined using a chi-square test. Result The prevalence of acute kidney injury among cases of perinatal asphyxia was 17.4%. The prevalence of acute kidney injury increased with an increase in the grading of hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy. Acute kidney injury was predominant among males with a male-to-female ratio being 3.2:1. Oliguric acute kidney injury was more common than non-oliguric acute kidney injury. 8.8% of cases had mortality, with the majority of cases being hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy grade II. The Chisquare test found a statistically significant association between hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy grades and acute kidney injury (p value=0.0113, i.e., p < 0.05) Conclusion Acute kidney injury remains one of the common complications of Perinatal Asphyxia (PA). There was a significant association between acute kidney injury cases and grades of Hypoxic Ischemic Encephalopathy (HIE), with HIE II being the most common type. Screening for acute kidney injury in case of hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy should be prioritized.