Refining predictive models in critically ill patients with acute renal failure.

Mortality rates in acute renal failure remain extremely high, and risk-adjustment tools are needed for quality improvement initiatives and design (stratification) and analysis of clinical trials. A total of 605 patients with acute renal failure in the intensive care unit during 1989-1995 were evaluated, and demographic, historical, laboratory, and physiologic variables were linked with in-hospital death rates using multivariable logistic regression. Three hundred and fourteen (51.