Update on the renal toxicity of iodinated contrast drugs used in clinical medicine

Michele Andreucci,1 Teresa Faga,1 Raffaele Serra,2 Giovambattista De Sarro,3 Ashour Michael1 1Renal Unit, Department of Health Sciences, 2Interuniversity Center of Phlebolymphology (CIFL), International Research and Educational Program in Clinical and Experimental Biotechnology, Department of Medical and Surgical Sciences, 3Pharmacology Unit, Department of Health Sciences, Magna Graecia University, Catanzaro, Italy Abstract: An important side effect of diagnostic contrast drugs is contrast-induced acute kidney injury (CI-AKI; a sudden decrease in renal function) occurring 48–72 hours after injection of a contrast drug that cannot be attributed to other causes. Its existence has recently been challenged, because of some retrospective studies in which the incidence of AKI was not different between subjects who received a contrast drug and those who did not, even using propensity score matching to prevent selection bias. For some authors, only patients with estimated glomerular filtration rate