In this study, we evaluated predictive variables related to hypotension in critically ill AKI patients submitted to intermittent dialysis. We found that clinical judgment of patient fluid status using a systematic clinical approach, including patient history, symptoms, and physical examination, was not predictive of intradialytic hypotension. However, the diagnosis of sepsis, the use of norepinephrine, a lower MAP, a higher lactate level, the size of the VPW, the presence of peripheral edema and need for mechanical ventilation were strongly associated with hemodynamic tolerance of the dialytic procedure.
Critically ill patients with AKI requiring RRT are in a high-acuity, fast-paced and high-stakes environment in which critical thinking is imperative [16]. However, the physicians in charge of those critical decisions are not used to making the thinking process explicit (discussing cognitive biases, debiasing strategies and inductive reasoning). Most of the decisions are based on a more intuitive process of decision making [17, 18]. Moreover, we found that overall agreement regarding the diagnosis of hypervolemia is poor among nephrologists and intensivists. In our study, we showed that the clinical judgment of hypervolemia does not predict hemodynamic tolerance of dialysis and that agreement about the presence of hypervolemia in individual patients was weak. Furthermore, the hemodynamic variables, perfusion parameters and other clinical data immediately before dialysis therapy that are usually used in the decision-making process based on the pattern recognition of a patient likely to become hypotensive during dialysis were not associated with hypotension during IDH.
The VPW, a measurement obtained from a CXR, is thought to be an indicator of the circulating blood volume [19, 20]. There are clinical and statistical correlations between the VPW and volume overload in different critically ill patients, and the VPW can be used to evaluate the volume status of a patient regardless of the CXR technique used [21–25]. It has been reported that the measurement of the VPW may be useful for the estimation of body fluid volume status and that the VPW decreases significantly during dialytic procedures in patients undergoing hemodialysis or peritoneal dialysis [25, 26]. In our study, we found that the VPW was strongly associated with the occurrence of hypotension during IHD, outperforming clinical judgment.
Our main limitation is that we did not compare the VPW to a direct measure of intravascular volume [27]. Although all the data were collected prospectively, many of the CXRs and dialysis procedures did not occur simultaneously. To minimize any potential bias this might have introduced, we limited our analysis to "matched" sets of measurements and CXRs obtained within three hours before the start of dialysis [28]. Additionally, there are current recommendations to limit the indications for CXRs to specific clinical contexts, such as changes in clinical status or the need for additional procedures [29], and to use nondeleterious technologies, such as bedside ultrasound, to assess the patients [10, 30]. Nevertheless, our data suggest that CXRs could still be used in resource-limited intensive care units that may not have access to bedside ultrasound and may be a useful tool in patients requiring RRT.