Renal Replacement Therapy in the Critically Ill Child*

Objectives: Although renal replacement therapy is widely used in critically ill children, there have been few comprehensive population-based studies of its use. This article describes renal replacement therapy use, and associated outcomes, in critically ill children across the United Kingdom in the largest cohort study of this patient group. Design: A retrospective observational study using prospectively collected data. Setting: Data from the Pediatric Intensive Care Audit Network database which collects data on all children admitted to U.K. PICUs. Patients: Children (< 16 yr) in PICU who received renal replacement therapy between January 1, 2005, and December 31, 2012, were identified. Interventions: Individual-level data including age, underlying diagnosis, modality (peritoneal dialysis and continuous extracorporeal techniques [continuous renal replacement therapy]), duration of renal replacement therapy, PICU length of stay, and survival were extracted. Measurements and Main Results: Three-thousand eight-hundred twenty-five of 129,809 PICU admissions (2.9%) received renal replacement therapy in 30 of 33 centers. Volumes of renal replacement therapy varied considerably from 0% to 8.6% of PICU admissions per unit, but volume was not associated with patient survival. Overall survival to PICU discharge (73.8%) was higher than previous reports. Mortality risk was related to age, with lower risk in older children compared with neonates (odds ratio, 0.6; 95% CI, 0.5-0.8) although mortality did not increase over the age of 1 year; mode of renal replacement therapy, with lower risk in peritoneal dialysis than continuous renal replacement therapy methodologies (odds ratio, 0.7; 0.5-0.9); duration of renal replacement therapy (odds ratio, 1.02/d; 95% CI, 1.01-1.04); and primary diagnosis, with the lowest survival in liver disease patients (53.9%). Conclusions: This study describes current renal replacement therapy use across the United Kingdom and associated outcomes. We describe a number of factors associated with outcome, including age, underlying diagnosis, and renal replacement therapy modality which will need to be factored into future trial design.