The AKORDD study of Outreach in Acute Kidney Injury
Research type
Research Study
Full title
The AKORDD study: Acute Kidney Outreach to Reduce Deterioration and Death - A feasibility study to determine the best implementation leading to a Cluster trial
IRAS ID
81460
Contact name
Mark Thomas
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Heart of England NHS Fooundation Trust
Research summary
About one in five adults admitted to hospital as an emergency will suffer Acute Kidney Injury (AKI), previously called acute renal failure. About a quarter of patients with AKI die. Most patients with AKI are managed by doctors who are not kidney experts. Effective AKI advice and treatments are available but not well integrated into routine care. A recent National review of the care of people who died from AKI showed that many suffered from poor care.
AKI is diagnosed by a blood test. Early diagnosis of AKI can avoid complications, dialysis (which costs over £20,000 a year, and affects the quality of life of patients) or death. We have developed computer software to diagnose AKI earlier. The software sends a warning/Alert to our team of kidney experts. We will look at the best way to set the Alert system. It needs to send an Alert for the right patients – the numbers of false alarms needs to be controlled. We will also study the best way to make clinicians pay attention to their patients who are developing AKI.
When our expert Outreach team receive an alert, they will call and advise the doctor looking after a patient with AKI on the best treatment for that patient.
We will do a pilot study, to further develop the system, and check whether it reduces the risk of death or complications from AKI. We will use this work to develop a larger trial of this new system for patients with AKI in different hospitals. This will convince the wider NHS of the need to change. It will also show how to prevent or reduce AKI. Ultimately we aim to reduce avoidable death and illness from AKI for patients. This will also save the NHS money, as prevention and reduction are cheaper than intensive treatment.
REC name
East Midlands - Nottingham 1 Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
14/EM/0184
Date of REC Opinion
12 Jun 2014
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion