Coronavirus may cause acute kidney damage in one third of hospital cases

Just another reason to keep the virus out until things improve.

Acute Kidney Injury Seen in Most Severe COVID-19 Cases — One third of all hospitalized cases also affected in NYC data

New data from two health systems in New York City — where hospitals struggled to keep up with dialysis demands as they were flooded with COVID-19 patients — detailed a high rate of acute kidney injury among infected patients.

In the first 1,000 patients with COVID-19 at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center, 33.9% developed acute kidney injury. Of the 236 who ended up in the ICU, 78% developed AKI, Ruijun Chen, MD, and colleagues reported in The BMJ.

In another study of 5,500 patients the rate was 36% of those hospitalized, and 89% of those in ICU on ventilators. Quite a few of these people went on to die, so, to put it bluntly, they wont be in need of dialysis or further care. But some part of the population in a post corona world will need ongoing care and won’t be able to work at their former level.

At least one person in the US likely died because there wasn’t enough dialysis equipment.

Docs are […]