We read the letter of Cheshire et al. [1] with interest, in response to our recent publication “Timing of acute kidney injury — does it matter? A single-centre experience from the United Kingdom” [2]. In our analysis, we only examined patients who ultimately required a period of renal replacement therapy (RRT) at some point during their hospital admission. Hence, the hospital-acquired acute kidney injury (h-AKI) group inherently had normal renal function at presentation whilst the distribution of the AKIN stages within the community acquired acute kidney injury (c-AKI) group was different to what would be expected when all patients admitted with acute kidney injury (AKI) are examined irrespective of whether they require RRT or not.
