Objectives: Children may present with acute kidney injury (AKI) and polyuria under certain conditions which can complicate diagnosis and management. This review seeks to synthesize AKI presentations in children with polyuria. Methods: Publications for this systematic review were searched using Embase, PubMed, and Scopus. Methodological quality assessment of the included study and case reports was performed. Results: From the selected studies, we obtained data on 32 patients with a mean age of 11.02 ± 2.82 years, including 13 males and 19 females. Among them, 26 presented with polyuria: 19 with diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA), 5 with new-onset type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) without DKA, 1 with Bartter syndrome, and 1 with neuroblastoma. In 12 patients with DKA, data to calculate AKI prevalence were not available. Among the remaining 20 patients (all with polyuria), 9 (45%) developed AKI. AKI stage 3 was observed in 4 patients and stage 2 in 1 patient. For the remaining 5 patients with AKI, no information about the AKI stage was available. Conclusions: AKI can present with polyuria as part of its pathophysiological mechanism. A relationship between polyuria and AKI (with KDIGO stage ≥ 2) was found in metabolic disorders (DKA), nephrological diseases (Bartter syndrome), and oncological conditions (neuroblastoma).
Keywords: AKI; acute kidney injury; children; diagnosis; pediatric; polyuria.