Development and validation of a risk nomogram for postoperative acute kidney injury in older patients undergoing liver resection: a pilot study

Abstract Background Postoperative acute kidney injury (AKI) is associated with poor clinical outcomes. Early identification of high-risk patients of developing postoperative AKI can optimize perioperative renal management and facilitate patient survival. The present study aims to develop and validate a nomogram to predict postoperative AKI after liver resection in older patients. Methods A retrospective observational study was conducted involving data from 843 older patients scheduled for liver resection at a single tertiary high caseload general hospital between 2012 and 2019. The data were randomly divided into training (70%, n = 599) and validation (30%, n = 244) datasets. The training cohort was used to construct a predictive nomogram for postoperative AKI with the logistic regression model which was confirmed by a validation cohort. The model was evaluated by receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve, calibration plot, and decision curve analysis in the validation cohort. A summary risk score was also constructed for identifying postoperative AKI patients. Results Postoperative AKI occurred in 155 (18.4%) patients and was highly associated with in-hospital mortality (5.2% vs. 0.7%, P