A Risk Prediction Flowchart of Vancomycin-Induced Acute Kidney Injury to Use When Starting Vancomycin Administration: A Multicenter Retrospective Study

We previously constructed a risk prediction model of vancomycin (VCM)-associated nephrotoxicity for use when performing initial therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM), using decision tree analysis. However, we could not build a model to be used at the time of initial administration due to insufficient sample size. Therefore, we performed a multicenter study at four hospitals in Japan. We investigated patients who received VCM intravenously at a standard dose from the first day until the initial TDM from November 2011 to March 2019. Acute kidney injury (AKI) was defined according to the criteria established by the “Kidney disease: Improving global outcomes” group. We extracted potential risk factors that could be evaluated on the day of initial administration and constructed a flowchart using a chi-squared automatic interaction detection algorithm. Among 843 patients, 115 (13.6%) developed AKI. The flowchart comprised three splitting variables (concomitant drugs (vasopressor drugs and tazobactam/piperacillin) and body mass index ≥ 30) and four subgroups. The incidence rates of AKI ranged from 9.34 to 36.8%, and they were classified as low-, intermediate-, and high-risk groups. The accuracy of flowchart was judged appropriate (86.4%). We successfully constructed a simple flowchart predicting VCM-induced AKI to be used when starting VCM administration.