Abstract:
Introduction: Acute kidney injury is common in COVID-19 hospitalized patients and is
associated with high mortality rate. However, acute kidney injury among COVID-19
hospitalized patients in the study setting is not well described. Understanding the magnitude
and factors associated with AKI among patients admitted with severe and critical covid19
pneumonia aids in the identification of priorities and the resources needed to improve care.
Objective: To determine the magnitude of acute kidney injury and associated factors
among severe COVID 19 pneumonia patients admitted to Jimma university medical college
in 2020/2021.
Methods: Institutional based cross-sectional study design was employed and patients were
selected using systematic random sampling from May 1, 2020 to December 30, 2021. The
data was entered using EPI-Info and analyzed using SPSS version 26. Descriptive statistics
was used to describe the study participants and variables and magnitude of acute kidney
injury was estimated with 95% confidence interval (CI).The association between the
outcome variable and explanatory variables was analyzed using binary logistic regression.
Simple logistic regression was used to screen candidate variables at p-value less than 0.25.
The magnitude of association between explanatory variable and acute kidney injury was
estimated using adjusted odds ratio (AOR) with 95% CI and significance was declared at pvalue of 0.05.
Results: A total of 224 patients were included and 42% [95%CI: 35.3, 48.2] had acute
kidney injury. Being male (AOR = 0.31; 95% CI: 0.1, 0.7), febrile (>37.5) (AOR= 6.5; 95%
CI: (2.7, 15.6), having hypoxemia (<93%) (AOR= 5.1; 95% CI: 1.4, 18.9), comorbidity
(AOR= 2.8; 95% CI: 1.1, 7.0) and severe anemia (hgb<8) (AOR= 10; 95%CI: 1.7, 65.7)
were significantly associated with acute kidney injury.
Conclusion: The magnitude of AKI was high in severe COVID 19 pneumonia patients.
Acute kidney injury was more observed among male, febrile, hypoxemic patient and those
have comorbidity and severe anaemia at presentation. So Clinicians should pay more
attention to those patients with predisposing factors in monitoring for AKI during
management of COVID-19 patients to decrease risk of AKI.
