The rate of acute kidney injury (AKI) alert detection by the attending physicians was associated with the prognosis of patients with AKI.

Introduction: Early identification of AKI was always considered to improve patients' prognosis. Some studies found that AKI early warning tools didn't affect patients' prognosis. Therefore, additional studies were necessary to explore the reasons.

Methods: This study was a secondary analysis of a multicenter randomized controlled trial that found electronic health record warnings for AKI did not influence patients' prognoses. Univariate, multivariate, subgroup, curve fitting, and threshold effect analysis were used to explore the association between AKI warnings detected by attending physicians and the patient's prognosis.

Results: A total of 6,030 AKI patients were included in the study. The patients were classified into two groups based on the rate of AKI alerts detected by attending physicians: the partial group ( = 5,377), and the complete group ( = 653). In comparison to the partial group, the complete group significantly decreased 14-day AKI progression, 14-day dialysis, and 14-day mortality, with adjusted ORs of 0.48 (0.33, 0.70), 0.26 (0.09, 0.77), and 0.53 (0.33, 0.84) respectively, and the complete group significantly improve the discharge to home, with an OR value of 1.50 (1.21, 1.87). When the rate of AKI alerts detected by the attending physicians as a continuity variable, we found that the rate of alerts seen by attending physicians was associated with 14-day mortality and the discharge to home, with adjusted ORs of 1.76 (1.11, 2.81) and 1.42 (1.13, 1.80). The sensitivity analysis, curve-fitting analysis, and threshold effect analysis also showed that the rate of alert seen by the attending physician was correlated with the patient's prognosis.

Conclusion: The rate of AKI alert detection by attending physician were related to the patient's prognosis. The higher the rate of AKI alert detection by attending physicians, the better the prognosis of patients with AKI.