RIFLE criteria for acute kidney injury are associated with hospital mortality in critically ill patients: a cohort analysis

The lack of a standard definition for acute kidney injury has resulted in a large variation in the reported incidence and associated mortality. RIFLE, a newly developed international consensus classification for acute kidney injury, defines three grades of severity--risk (class R), injury (class I) and failure (class F)--but has not yet been evaluated in a clinical series.

We performed a retrospective cohort study, in seven intensive care units in a single tertiary care academic center, on 5,383 patients admitted during a one year period (1 July 2000-30 June 2001).