About 20% of all adult emergency admissions are affected by acute kidney injury (AKI) and the mortality rate is almost 25%.  It has been estimated that AKI, excluding cases in the community, causes more than 10,000 preventable deaths a year in England. AKI represents a wide spectrum of injury to the kidneys, not just kidney failure, the vast majority of AKI cases start with an illness in the community. In AKI, loss of kidney function contributes to morbidity and mortality. Patients die from AKI rather than with AKI as a complication of an underlying illness. The definition of AKI now includes any adult with ≥ 26 µmol/L rise in creatinine from baseline over 48 hours or less, or  ≥ 50% rise in creatinine from baseline known or presumed to have occurred over seven days or less.