Plasma Cystatin C (PCYSC) as an Early Marker of Acute Kidney Injury (AKI) in Intensive Care Unit (ICU) Patients

We studied the importance of pCysC as a marker for early detection of acute kidney injury and as a predictor of cardiovascular mortality among patients admitted to the medical critical care unit of Zagazig University hospitals.Based on creatinine criterion used by the Acute Kidney Injury Network definition, 40% of admitted patients are identified as AKI patients. When applying the same rules to pCysC as to sCr, ARF was diagnosed one day earlier by pCysC. These results confirm the previously reported findings of several single center and multicenter studies that documented even higher rates of AKI among surgical as well as medical critical care patients.We also confirmed the previous reports of increasing incidence of AKI in the elderly patients.We observed that Serum cystatin C levels were not influenced by gender; also there was a strong association of pCysC concentration with age.Our study revealed also that the relative increase in pCysC was more rapid in the majority of individuals than the relative increase in pCr by about 24h. These results confirm the previously reported findings of several studies.In our study, pCysC was predictor of sustained AKI, while sCr wasn’t predictor.