Emergency medicine pharmacotherapy compromises accuracy of plasma
creatinine determination by enzyme-based methods: real-world clinical
evidence
Abstract
Background: Assessment of kidney function in emergency settings is
essential across all medical subspecialties. Daily assessment of patient
creatinine result from emergency medical services showed that some
creatinine results apparently deviated from expected creatinine values
implying occurrence of drug-related interferences. Methods: Real-time
head-to-head clinical evaluation of an enzyme method (Roche CREP2) in
comparison to Jaffé gen. 2 method (Roche CREJ2) was performed. During
the period of December 2022 and January 2023 we analyzed 8498 patient
specimens where 5524 were heavily medicated STAT patient specimens, 500
were pediatric specimens and 2474 specimens were from a distant general
population in a different region using the same methods. Results: About
5 percent of hospital specimens having patient history showed apparent
drops of creatinine concentrations by the enzyme method against the
compensated Jaffé method. Suspect medication was found in 43 out of 46
reviewed patients where medication data were allowed for review. A
general patient cohort showed no drops of concentrations measured by the
enzyme method. Pediatric hospital cohort showed 6 drops out of 500 total
measurements. Conclusions: Pharmacotherapy-induced inaccuracies with
enzyme creatinine methods imply the need for proper method validations
in the relevant patient population such as emergency hospital setting
and may facilitate introduction of cystatin C to emergency medicine
clinical practice as suitable creatinine alternate biomarker.