Clarissa Diamantidis, MD, and Virginia Wang, PhD, are the Principal investigators on a research project that received funding from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) for a project entitled, "National Study of Community-Acquired Acute Kidney Injury Epidemiology & Outcomes."
This study is an evaluation that will merge national Veterans Healthcare Administration and Medicare data to identify incidence of community-acquired acute kidney injury, its risk factors, and association with hospitalization.
Principal Investigators: Clarissa Diamantidis, Virginia Wang
Co-Investigators: Valerie Smith, C. Barrett Bowling, Matthew Maciejewski
Specific Aims:
- Define the epidemiology of community-acquired AKI (CA-AKI) in a national cohort of Veterans Healthcare Administration (VA) enrollees and identify patient subgroups at increased risk of CA-AKI. Capitalizing on national laboratory and clinical encounter data from 2008-2018, we will apply various clinical measurement approaches to define CA-AKI and describe the incidence of and risk factors for outpatient CA-AKI among VA primary care users.
- Assess risks of hospitalization following incidence of CA-AKI. We will merge VA laboratory data, VA claims and Medicare claims of VA primary care users with and without CA-AKI to examine CA-AKI associations with all-cause hospitalization, and AKI- and CVD-specific hospitalization.
This study will be the first to assess the measurement and burden of CA-AKI in a national cohort and to examine and sequelae of CA-AKI in the US. Drawing from the electronic records of the nation’s largest integrated healthcare system, this study will comprehensively examine CA-AKI, apply various CA-AKI definitions, and evaluate their association with clinical outcomes. The findings will provide critically needed empirical evidence to inform measurement and identification of kidney injury using clinical laboratory data. This work serves as a foundation from which subsequent studies will be conducted to support clinical guidelines and to identify opportunities for future, targeted clinical interventions for CA-AKI.