In the veterinary literature, acute renal failure is generally defined as an abrupt decrease in renal function leading to retention of nitrogenous waste. Specifically, elevation of creatinine above the upper limit of the reference range, in the absence of clinical signs of chronicity, is the definition used by the few veterinary reports of ARF. While this definition has a high specificity for ARF, it lacks sensitivity. An increase of > 0.3 mg/dl or > 50% increase from baseline creatinine are definitions of ARF that detect more subtle renal injury. Because creatinine is poorly correlated with glomerular filtration rate at low levels of dysfunction, these changes in creatinine may represent dramatic decreases in renal function but still remain withinthe reference range for the laboratory. A new classification scheme proposed for humans has shown that even low levels of renal dysfunction that do not cause a classic "failure" state negatively impact prognosis, and the term acute kidney injury (AKI) isreplacing acute renal failure. The classification scheme has 5 levels, abbreviated RIFLE, defined by glomerular filtration rate (GFR) or by urine output (UO). For people, the prognosis worsens at each step in the scheme. This scheme has not been evaluated in veterinary medicine.
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