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30,000 – the number of Kidney Attacks in New Zealand each year.

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Where does this number come from?

Research in other parts of the world has Kidney Attack, or Acute Kidney Injury ^[3], at ~5% of all hospital admissions.  Estimates range from 2% to >9%.  5% is the generally accepted incidence.  New Zealand has more than 1.1 million hospital admissions a year, with 410,000 of them day cases.  5% of the 690,000 longer stays is 34,500.  30,000 is, therefore, a conservative estimate.  The NZ health stats don’t report these numbers because they are not collected.  They are not collected because nearly always the cause for hospital admission is something else – heart attack, infection etc.  These “something elses” all can cause Kidney Attack.   Kidney Attack raises the chances of dying in hospital 4 fold.

I’d like to find the NZ incidence of Kidney Attack instead of relying on estimates based on overseas numbers.  In particular, I’d like to see if there are any differences related to ethnicity.  I’m searching for funding to do this.

Tagged: Acute Kidney Injury ^[4], AKI ^[5], Kidney ^[6], Kidney Attack ^[7], World Kidney Day ^{[8] [9]}