Acute kidney injury in critically ill children: predictive value of renal arterial Doppler assessment.

Early recognition of acute kidney injury (AKI) is essential to promptly initiate supportive care aimed at restoring renal perfusion, which may prevent or attenuate acute tubular necrosis. Renal arterial Doppler-based parameters are rapid, noninvasive, and repeatable variables that may be promising for the prediction of AKI in children. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to evaluate the use of renal Doppler-based variables to predict AKI in critically ill children. The present study found that Doppler-based variables could accurately predict the occurrence of severe AKI and were correlated with urinary output and diuretic use.