Acute renal failure and sepsis.

N Engl J Med 2004;351:159-69. Copyright © 2004 Massachusetts Medical Society. cute renal failure occurs in approximately 19 percent of patients with moderate sepsis, 23 percent with severe sepsis, and 51 percent with septic shock when blood cultures are positive (Tables 1 and 2). 1,2 A progressive increase in the acute respiratory distress syndrome also occurs with moderate and severe sepsis and septic shock. In the United States, an estimated 700,000 cases of sepsis occur each year, resulting in more than 210,000 deaths; this number accounts for 10 percent of all deaths annually and exceeds the number of deaths due to myocardial infarction. 3 The combination of acute renal failure and sepsis is associated with a 70 percent mortality, as compared with a 45 percent mortality among patients with acute renal failure alone. Thus, the combination of sepsis and acute renal failure constitutes a particularly serious medical problem in the United States. 4 Substantial progress has been made toward understanding the mechanisms whereby sepsis is associated with a high incidence of acute renal failure. Moreover, recently identified clinical interventions may be able to decrease the occurrence of acute renal failure and sepsis and the high associated mortality. The cytokine-mediated induction of nitric oxide synthesis that occurs in sepsis decreases systemic vascular resistance. 5 This arterial vasodilatation predisposes patients with sepsis to acute renal failure, the need for mechanical ventilation, and ultimately, increased mortality. In this article, we review the effects of nitric oxide–mediated arterial vasodilatation on resistance to exogenous pressors and hypotension (Fig. 1), and we discuss the use of arginine vasopressin in patients with septic shock. We also review the effects of increased plasma concentrations of several endogenous vasoconstrictor hormones, including catecholamines, angiotensin II, and endothelin, which support arterial pressure in patients with sepsis who have vasodilatation but also cause renal vasoconstriction and predispose patients to acute renal failure. Patients who have a combination of sepsis and acute renal failure may have some effects of systemic arterial vasodilatation, such as altered Starling forces in the capillaries, pulmonary edema, hypoxia, a need for mechanical ventilation, acute respiratory distress syndrome, and multiple-organ dysfunction syndrome, which together may increase mortality to more than 80 percent (Fig. 2). 6,7 We discuss interventions that may prevent this dire sequence of events. Finally, we review several prospective, randomized clinical trials of interventions that have the potential to prevent or attenuate acute renal failure in patients with sepsis and thus decrease mortality. Such trials have addressed anticoagulant therapy, early resuscitation, the treatment of hyperglycemia, the use of corticosteroids, a shortened duration of mechanical ventilation, and various types of renal-replacement therapy.