A simple clinical tool for stratifying risk of clinically significant CKD after nephrectomy: development and multinational validation

BACKGROUND: Clinically significant CKD following surgery for kidney cancer is associated with increased morbidity and mortality, but identifying patients at increased CKD risk remains difficult. Simple methods to stratify risk of clinically significant CKD after nephrectomy are needed. METHODS: To develop a tool for stratifying patients' risk of CKD arising after surgery for kidney cancer, we tested models in a population-based cohort of 699 patients with kidney cancer in Queensland, Australia (2012-2013). We validated these models in a population-based cohort of 423 patients from Victoria, Australia, and in patient cohorts from single centers in Queensland, Scotland, and England. Eligible patients had two functioning kidneys and a preoperative eGFR ≥60 ml/min per 1.73 m2. The main outcome was incident eGFR <45 ml/min per 1.73 m2 at 12 months postnephrectomy. We used prespecified predictors-age ≥65 years old, diabetes mellitus, preoperative eGFR, and nephrectomy type (partial/radical)-to fit logistic regression models and grouped patients according to degree of risk of clinically significant CKD (negligible, low, moderate, or high risk). RESULTS: Absolute risks of stage 3b or higher CKD were <2%, 3% to 14%, 21% to 26%, and 46% to 69% across the four strata of negligible, low, moderate, and high risk, respectively. The negative predictive value of the negligible risk category was 98.9% for clinically significant CKD. The c statistic for this score ranged from 0.84 to 0.88 across derivation and validation cohorts. CONCLUSIONS: Our simple scoring system can reproducibly stratify postnephrectomy CKD risk on the basis of readily available parameters. This clinical tool's quantitative assessment of CKD risk may be weighed against other considerations when planning management of kidney tumors and help inform shared decision making between clinicians and patients.