American journal of kidney diseases : the official journal of the National Kidney Foundation
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Comparative Study
Performance of the Cockcroft-Gault and modification of diet in renal disease equations in estimating GFR in ill hospitalized patients.
Estimating glomerular filtration rate (GFR) in severely ill inpatients is clinically important for therapeutic interventions and prognosis, but notoriously difficult to do accurately. The Modification of Diet in Renal Disease (MDRD) equation and Cockcroft-Gault (CG) formula are widely used to estimate renal function in sick hospitalized patients; however, neither method has been validated in this setting. ⋯ Estimation equations are performed poorly compared with iGFR and are not reliable measures of actual level of function in sick hospitalized patients, especially those with a high BUN/SCr ratio. Although use of the 6-variable MDRD equation provides a better estimation of GFR, it still is unsuitable for clinical application in this population.