Neonatal Cardiac Surgery and Acute Kidney Injury: Early Risk Forecasting Is Important

It is well known that neonates who develop acute kidney injury (AKI) in intensive care have worse outcomes than those that do not develop AKI; this has been shown in neonates with medical illness,1 after noncardiac surgery,2 and after cardiac surgery with cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB).3 In this issue of The Annals of Thoracic Surgery, Sasaki and colleagues4 report on neonatal AKI after cardiac surgery without CPB. They conclude that although AKI was common (38%), it was mostly transient and not associated with worse outcomes.