It was recently proposed to distinguish early from late sepsis-associated acute kidney injury (SA-AKI). We aimed to determine the relative frequency of these entities in critically ill patients and to describe their characteristics and outcomes.

We included in this retrospective cohort study all adult patients admitted for sepsis in a tertiary ICU between 2010 and 2020. We excluded those on chronic dialysis or without consent. We extracted serum creatinine, hourly urinary output, and clinical and socio-demographic data from medical records until day 7 or ICU discharge. AKI presence and characteristics were assessed daily using KDIGO criteria. We compared patients with early (occurring within 2 days of admission) or late (occurring between day 2 and day 7) SA-AKI. We conducted sensitivity analyses using different definitions for early/late SA-AKI.

Among 1835 patients, 1660 (90%) fulfilled SA-AKI criteria. Of those, 1610 (97%) had early SA-AKI, and 50 (3%) had late SA-AKI. Similar proportions were observed when only considering AKI with elevated sCr (71% vs. 3%), severe AKI (67% vs. 6%), or different time windows for early SA-AKI. Compared with early SA-AKI patients, those with late SA-AKI were younger (median age [IQR] 59 [49–70] vs. 69 [58–76] years, p < 0.001), had lower Charlson comorbidity index (3 [1–5] vs. 5 [3–7], p < 0.001) and lower SAPSII scores (41 [34–50] vs. 53 [43–64], p < 0.001). They had similar (24% vs. 26%, p = 0.75) in-hospital mortality.

AKI is almost ubiquitous in septic critically ill patients and present within two days of admission. The timing from ICU admission might not be relevant to distinguish different phenotypes of SA-AKI.

Ethics Committee Vaud, Lausanne, Switzerland (n°2017-00008).