Acute kidney injury (AKI) is an important issue in the management of acute cardiovascular diseases. The risk, injury, failure, loss of kidney function, and end-stage renal failure (RIFLE) criteria, and acute kidney injury network (AKIN) criteria have been proposed to stage and predict the outcomes of patients with AKI. In this article, we review AKI in the context of a variety of acute cardiovascular diseases, e.g., acute myocardial infarction (AMI), myocarditis, aortic dissection, and post-cardiotomy cardiogenic shock. For earlier detection of AKI, numerous biomarkers have been proposed and Cystatin C has been shown to have predictive value for AKI in patients with AMI.
Key words: Acute cardiovascular disease; Acute kidney injury.