Nursing Involvement in Continuous Renal Replacement Therapy in a Surgical Intensive Care Unit

Abstract

Introduction: Acute renal dysfunction is a serious and frequent complication in Intensive Care Units, associated with the use of continuous renal replacement therapies, where nursing action is decisive for successful application.

Objective: To describe the involvement of nursing in the use of continuous renal replacement therapies in a Surgical Intensive Care Unit.

Methods: A quantitative, descriptive, cross-sectional study of 10 patients with continuous renal replacement therapies in the Intensive Care Unit was carried out at the National Center for Minimal Invasive Surgery, Havana, Cuba, from 2016 to 2019. The medical records were reviewed for the variables age, sex, hemofilter duration, duration of therapy, venous access, creatinine and urea values. The IBM SPSS program for Windows was used to calculate absolute frequency distributions, mean, percentages, median, standard deviation, minimum and maximum value.

Results: The median age was 73 years, hemofilter had a mean duration of 14.70 hours, mean therapy time 77 hours, mean creatinine values 206.9 µmol /l and urea 22.4 mmol /l. Systemic anticoagulation was used.

Conclusions: The nursing involvement was decisive in the successful use of continuous renal replacement therapies in the Surgical Intensive Care Unit studied. Acute renal failure was the cause of initiation of therapies; older patients predominated with no differences in relation to sex. The therapy was kept for more than 72 hours in several patients; a greater longevity of the filters should be achieved.