Standardizing Acute Kidney Injury Guidelines

Representatives of the major critical care and nephrology societies and associations and invited content experts were assigned to workgroups to consider three topics: (a) the development of uniform standards for definition and classification of AKI, (b) joint conference topics, and (c) the interdisciplinary collaborative research network. Each workgroup had an assigned chair and co-chair to facilitate the discussion and develop summary recommendations of the workgroup. The draft recommendations were then refined and improved during discussion with the larger group. Key points and issues were noted and then discussed a second time if no resolution was reached initially. When a majority view was not evident or when the area was felt to be of extreme importance, votes were tallied. Dissenting opinions were also noted. The final recommendations were circulated to all participants and subsequently agreed upon as the consensus recommendations for this report. After an iterative process of revisions, the final manuscript was presented to each of the respective societies for endorsement. Societies were asked to facilitate dissemination of the findings to their membership through presentations in society conferences and publication of summary reports in society journals, Web sites, and other forms of communication.