Kidney injury seen in more than a third of COVID-19 patients - U.S. study

Over a third of patients treated for COVID-19 in a large New York medical system developed acute kidney injury, and nearly 15% required dialysis, U.S. researchers reported on Thursday.

Colette Luke has more.

As doctors race to understand the novel coronavirus and how it attacks the human body - a recent finding from New York could offer some clues.

Over a third of patients treated for COVID-19 in a large New York medical system developed acute kidney injury, and nearly 15% required dialysis..

That’s according to a study conducted by a team at New York State’s largest health provider Northwell Health.

The study’s’ co-author Dr. Kenar Jhaveri said they studied 5,449 patients from March 1st to April 5th.

"36.6% of them developed acute renal failure or kidney injury.

Of the ones that got kidney injury, 14% required dialysis." Acute kidney injury occurs when the kidneys fail and become unable to filter out waste.

The study found that kidney failure occurred early on, with around 37 percent of patients arriving at the hospital with failing kidneys, or developing the condition within the first 24 hours of being admitted.

Jhaveri, the associate chief of nephrology at Hofstra/Northwell in Great Neck, New York, said that in many cases, the kidney failure occurred around the time severely ill patients needed to be placed on a ventilator.

Among the more than 1,000 patients who needed to be placed on a ventilator, about 90% developed acute kidney failure.

But Jhaveri cautioned that very ill patients in general often develop kidney failure as their conditions become more severe.

“We think that it's related to just being very sick and being on a ventilator in the ICU.

But there were some studies coming... where a virus could be in the kidney... but the jury's still out on that.” But knowing the proportion of patients at risk for this condition, Jhaveri said, could help hospitals plan equipment and staffing needed for future virus surges.