Acute Kidney Injury (AKI): Complications

00:01 We've been successful in talking about all of our different etiologies and causes of AKI from pre-renal, intrarenal and post-renal.

00:09 Now let's talk about some of the complications associated from having acute kidney injury.

00:14 The most significant is uremia or the uremic syndrome and this is characterized by having nausea, patients complaining of vomiting, and anorexia - just not being hungry for food, dysgeusia - meaning that when they do eat, food has a very abnormal quality or taste.

00:34 Oftentimes, they will say it tastes metallic or like cardboard.

00:39 altered cognition, and finally pericarditis as shown in this image over here This is a chest x-ray of a patient who has a large uremic pericardial effusion and when our patients have that, that's an emergency.

00:55 Other complications include hyperkalemia, which is one of our electrolyte abnormalities.

01:00 Keep in mind that immunoglycosides and cisplatin can actually cause hypokalemia because of how they act in their tubule.

01:08 However for the most part, people will manifest with hyperkalemia.

01:12 Metabolic acidosis from a decreased and proximal ammoniagenesis, Extracellular volume excess meaning that these patients get volume overloaded and we can see why that's happening if somebody becomes oliguric or anuric Then they have sodium and water retention.

01:31 And finally, what's really important to note is that, repeated episodes or unresolved acute kidney injury can actually lead to chronic kidney disease.