Further Diagnostic Evaluation – High Creatinine (Nursing)

00:00 We've looked at the six most probable causes for high creatinine.

00:04 We reminded you gently but it's really important to be on the lookout for acute kidney injury.

00:10 So it doesn't become chronic kidney injury.

00:12 Now, there's some extra tests that we can look at that will help you determine kidney function.

00:17 24 hour urine are gold standard, but they're not super convenient and they can be problematic with going through multiple shifts and trying to make sure we have a complete specimen.

00:28 So here's some other lab work you'll likely consider and dealing with a patient who has high creatinine, eGFR which is an estimated glomerular filtration rate.

00:38 That's going to tell us how those individual glomerulus are doing, how much is moving through per minute.

00:43 We could look at BUN, a blood urea nitrogen and a BUN to serum creatinine ratio.

00:49 We can look for protein in the urine, which is albumin.

00:53 That's a tough one to say, but it's also not a very good sign if you have noticeable protein in your urine, your kidneys are really struggling and starting to show damage.

01:04 Now the last one is an albumin to creatinine ratio.

01:08 So while a 24 hour urine is a gold standard.

01:11 These are for other tests are a little more convenient.

01:14 It can still give us really good clinical information about your kidneys function.