Abstract
Objective:
To evaluate the accuracy of abbreviated urine collection (≤12 hours) compared with 24-hour urine collection for measuring creatinine clearance (CrCl) in critically ill adult patients.
Data Sources:
We searched PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, Google Scholar, and ProQuest Dissertations and Thesis Global; screened reference lists of included studies; and contacted the authors when needed. English studies only were considered with no restriction on dates.
Study Selection and Data Extraction:
After duplicate removal, 2 reviewers screened titles/abstracts, reviewed full-text articles, and extracted data independently. Studies that compared abbreviated versus 24-hour urine collection for measuring CrCl were included. We assessed the risk of bias using the QUADAS-2 tool. We extracted correlation coefficients, mean prediction errors (ME)—as a measure of bias, and root mean squared prediction errors (RMSE)—as a measure of precision.
Data Synthesis:
Five studies were included, comprising 528 adult critically ill adults from surgical, medical, and trauma intensive care units (ICUs). Three studies had high risk of bias, and 2 had low risk. The studies evaluated different durations of urine collection, including 30-minute, 2-hour, 4-hour, 6-hour, and 12-hour. Mean 24-hour CrCl ranged from 57 mL/min/1.73 m2 to 103 mL/min. Abbreviated urine collection led to CrCl that correlated well with the 24-hour measured CrCl (correlation coefficient ranged from 0.8 to 0.95). Mean prediction error ranged from 5 mL/min/1.73 m2 to 16 mL/min (from 8% to 25% of the 24-hour CrCl). Root mean squared prediction error calculated from 1 study was 30.5 mL/min/1.73 m2.
Relevance to Patient Care and Clinical Practice:
Abbreviated urine collection is used to measure CrCl for renal drug dosing in critically ill patients, but its accuracy is not well-established.
Conclusions:
Abbreviated urine collection may overestimate CrCl compared with 24-hour urine collection. Larger, well-conducted studies are needed to evaluate the accuracy of CrCl measured using different durations of urine collection in critically ill patients.
Keywords
Background
Dose adjustment of renally-excreted drugs is necessary to prevent drug accumulation and toxicities. Appropriate renal drug dosing is particularly important in critically ill patients because of their higher susceptibility to adverse drug effects. 1 In noncritically ill adult patients, drug-dosing can be guided by formulas that estimate creatinine clearance (CrCl) or glomerular filtration rate (GFR) such as Cockcroft-Gault (CG) equation, the Modification of Diet in Renal Disease (MDRD) equation, and the Chronic Kidney Disease Epidemiology Collaboration (CKD-EPI) equation.2-5 The estimated CrCl or GFR is then used to select the appropriate dosing regimens for specific drugs. 2
The usefulness of the previously mentioned formulas in critically ill patients is uncertain. These formulas were originally developed in noncritically ill patients.2-5 In addition, they assume steady-state serum creatinine, but most critically ill patients have unstable serum creatinine and volume status that alter the pharmacokinetics of creatinine. 2 Several studies have demonstrated that estimating formulas have high bias and poor precision in critically ill patients, compared with CrCl measured using 24-hour urine collection 6 and compared with the use of exogenous markers such as chromium-ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (51Cr-EDTA) 7 and inulin 8 .
Measuring CrCl using 24-hour urine collection provides more accurate quantification of renal function than estimation formulas. 2 However, the long duration of urine collection makes it error-prone and labor-intensive. 9 It is also impractical to delay dose adjustments in critical illness until 24-hour urine collection is completed, in addition to the time required by the laboratory to report creatinine values. Shorter durations of urine collection may provide a faster alternative to guide timely renal dose adjustments in critically ill patients.
In this systematic review, we aimed to evaluate the accuracy of abbreviated urine collection compared with 24-hour urine collection for measuring CrCl in critically ill adult patients.
Methods
Search Strategy and Selection Criteria
This systematic review followed the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) Statement, 10 and targeted the following PICO question: in critically ill adult patients, what is the accuracy of creatinine clearance measured by abbreviated urine collection (≤12 hours) compared with 24-hour urine collection. Eligible studies were comparative studies, including randomized controlled trials, nonrandomized controlled trials, before and after studies, prospective and retrospective cohort studies, case-control studies, and analytical cross-sectional studies. Studies were included if they involved adult critically ill patients admitted to any type of ICU, for example, medical or surgical. We excluded descriptive observational study designs and qualitative studies. Reviews and opinion papers were not included, but their reference lists were screened for eligible studies.
We undertook an initial search of PubMed to identify relevant articles on the topic. We used the text words contained in the titles and abstracts of relevant articles and the index terms describing relevant articles to develop a complete search strategy. We searched PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, and Google Scholar using the complete search strategy. We also searched ProQuest Dissertations and Thesis Global (available at https://www.proquest.com). Full details of the search strategy are available in Appendix A. We ran the searches on March 4, 2023. We searched the databases from the date of inception (without any limitation on the dates) and included studies published in English only. We also screened the reference lists of included studies for eligible studies. We updated the search on March 1, 2024, using the same search strategy, and filtered the results to include only publication dates on or after March 4, 2023 (the date of initial search), and did not find more relevant records by title/abstract screening.
Selection of Studies and Data Extraction
Following the search, all identified citations were collated and uploaded into EndNote 20 (Clarivate Analytics, PA, USA), and duplicates were removed. After duplicate removal, records were uploaded to the Rayyan online tool; and titles and abstracts were screened independently by 2 reviewers (MS and AM). Disagreements were resolved by discussion and consensus. Potentially relevant records were sought for retrieval in full. The full text of identified records was assessed in detail against the inclusion criteria by 2 reviewers (MS and AM) independently. Reasons for exclusion of full-text studies that do not meet the inclusion criteria were recorded. The corresponding authors were contacted to provide the full text of their studies when they were not available online. The search results and the study inclusion process were reported in full and presented in a PRISMA flow diagram. 10
Data Extraction
Two reviewers (MS and AM) independently extracted relevant data from the included studies using a customized Microsoft Excel data extraction form developed by the reviewers. Discrepancies in the extracted data were resolved by consensus after revisiting the full-text articles. The data extracted included aim(s), design, details of participants, settings, renal function quantification methods, analysis methods, and outcome measures. We contacted the corresponding authors of included studies to request missing or additional data when required.
Outcome Measures
To evaluate the agreement between CrCl measured by abbreviated collection and 24-hour urine collection, measurement bias, estimated as the mean of differences between the 2 methods (mean prediction error), was extracted from the included studies. The root of mean squared prediction error was sought as a measure of precision as described by Sheiner and Beal. 11
Correlation coefficients were extracted from the included studies as well. Where coefficients of determination were reported from simple linear regression of measured 24-hour CrCl on abbreviated CrCl, correlation coefficients (r) were calculated as the square root of coefficients of determination (R2).
Risk of Bias Assessment
The risk of bias in the included studies was assessed independently by 2 reviewers (MS and AM) using the Quality Assessment of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies (QUADAS-2) tool. This tool assesses the risk of bias and concerns about applicability by addressing 4 domains: patient selection, index test, reference standard, and flow of patients through the study and timing of the index tests and reference standard. 12 Studies were considered to have an overall high risk of bias if any domain was judged as high risk and an overall low risk of bias if all domains of bias were judged as low risk. Disagreements were resolved by discussion and consensus.
Results
Study Selection
A total of 5758 unique records were identified through database searching. Title and abstract screening yielded 11 records, of which 4 abstracts did not have full text (3 studies published as conference abstracts13-15, which did not report comparing abbreviated CrCl to 24-hour CrCl; and 1 study published in 1987, 16 which did not have full text available online). We contacted the corresponding authors of these 4 abstracts twice by e-mail to get the full text, but we did not get a reply. The remaining 7 records underwent full-text review. Of those, 1 article was in Chinese, 17 1 did not assess the accuracy of absolute CrCl measures but only assessed the change in CrCl as a marker of acute kidney injury, 18 and 1 was of noncritically ill patients. 19
Five records were identified from sources other than database searching; 3 of them were excluded: 2 studies compared CrCl using abbreviated urine collection to clearance of exogenous substances (51Cr-EDTA and cystatin C) and the reported data were insufficient to establish direct comparison to 24-hour CrCl,7,8 and 1 used 1-hour CrCl as a reference group to which CrCl estimation formulas were compared. 20 In addition, 1 record was for a conference abstract of a study identified through the database search. 21 Overall, we included 4 studies from database searching,9,22-24 and 1 study identified through other sources. 25 The study selection process is detailed in the PRISMA flow diagram (Figure 1).

PRISMA flow chart of study selection.
Description of Included Studies
The 5 studies comprising 528 adult critically ill patients were published between 1980 and 2007. Four studies were conducted in the United States22-25 and 1 in Spain. 9 The study design was stated to be prospective in 4 studies9,22,24 and was not explicitly stated in 1 study, 25 which we classified as prospective based on the described study methods. The studies were conducted in different types of ICUs (medical, surgical, trauma/surgical, and mixed). The number of critically ill patients included in each study ranged from 19 to 359. Three studies excluded patients with oliguria,23-25 1 excluded any patient with anuria, 9 and 1 excluded patients with end-stage renal disease who were anuric. 22 Two studies reported using more than 1 sample set for individual patients.22,25
The mean 24-hour measured CrCl ranged from 57 mL/min/1.73 m2 to 103 mL/min. Three studies used 24-hour CrCl as a reference group,9,22,24 1 used 22-hour CrCl, 25 and 1 used inulin clearance. 23 Three studies evaluated the CG formula for estimating CrCl in addition to abbreviated urine collection.9,22,23 Table 1 shows the detailed characteristics of the included studies.
Characteristics of Studies Included in the Systematic Review.
Abbreviations: CG, Cockloft–Gault equation; CrCl, creatinine clearance; eGFR, estimated GFR; hr, hour; ICU, intensive care unit; min, minute.
The reference method in each study.
Risk of Bias
Three studies were judged using the QUADAS-2 tool to be at high risk of bias22,24,25 and 2 studies were at low risk.9,23 Two studies were judged to have high concerns about applicability.22,24 Figure 2 summarizes the assessment of bias and applicability of included studies. The details of the risk of bias per domain and their justifications are presented in Appendix B.

Summary of Quality Assessment of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies (QUADAS-2) tool. (a) Risk of bias assessment. (b) Concerns regarding applicability.
Accuracy of Abbreviated Urine Collection
Different accuracy measures were used in the included studies (Table 1). Two studies reported bias (mean prediction error),9,24 and we calculated it from the reported data in 1 study. 23 The bias ranged from 10 to 16 mL/min for different urine collection durations (reported as 16% to 25% of the 24-hour CrCl) in 1 study 24 , was 5 mL/min/1.73 m2 (9% of the mean 24-hour CrCl) in another study 23 and was 8.3 mL/min/1.73 m2 (8% of the mean 24-hour CrCl) in the third study. 9 Bias increased at higher ranges of mean 24-hour CrCl.9,24 Table 2 depicts the values of bias comparing abbreviated CrCl to the reference group in each study.
Measurement Bias of CrCl Using Different Abbreviated Urine Collection Durations Compared With 24-Hour CrCl and Correlation Coefficient Between the Two Measures.
24-hour CrCl and bias are expressed as mean (SD) and measured in mL/min unless noted otherwise
Measured in mL/min/1.73 m2.
Calculated using the data reported in the study.
Correlation coefficients calculated as the square root of R2 from simple linear regression.
We calculated the precision from the data reported in 1 study. 23 The mean of squared prediction error was 927.5 mL 2 /min 2 /1.73m4, equivalent to a root mean squared prediction error of 30.5 mL/min/1.73 m2. Only 1 study used the Bland-Altman method 26 to assess agreement between measured CrCl using abbreviated urine collection and 24-hour CrCl. 9
Two studies used linear regression,22,23 2 used correlation coefficients,9,24 and 1 used both 25 to describe the relationship between measured CrCl using abbreviated urine collection and 24-hour urine collection. Correlation coefficients ranged from 0.8 to 0.95 and were generally higher for longer durations of urine collection (Table 2). One study reported that the correlation between the 2-hour and 24-hour CrCl was particularly good in patients with 2-hour CrCl of less than 80 mL/min and was lowest in 6 patients with CrCl above 120 mL/min. 24
Discussion
In this systematic review, we found that CrCl measured using abbreviated urine collection (≤ 12 hours) correlated well with CrCl measured using 24-hour urine collection. However, it has a measurement bias ranging from 5 mL/min/1.73 m2 to 16 mL/min (from 8% to 25% of the 24-hour CrCl). In addition, abbreviated urine collection led to an imprecise measurement of CrCl in 1 study (root mean squared prediction error = 30.5 mL/min/1.73 m2). Thus, using abbreviated urine collection may overestimate CrCl and result in dosing recommendations higher than those based on 24-hour CrCl.
Measurement of CrCl using 24-hour urine collection requires accurate urine collection for a relatively long time, which increases the chances of error, increases the workload on bedside nurses, and makes it unsuitable for repeated measurements. 9 In addition, the time required for urine collection and sample analysis in the laboratory limits its usefulness for timely dose adjustments, which is crucial in critically ill patients. The use of abbreviated urine collection has emerged as a potential alternative to overcome these limitations. Indeed, one of the included studies reported that 24-hour measurements could not be obtained in 13.9% of the study population, whereas only 0.6% of the 2-hour measurements could not be obtained. 9 Furthermore, several studies have used CrCl calculated using abbreviated urine collection as a reference group to which other methods of CrCl estimation were compared.14,15,20 However, given the findings of this review, abbreviated CrCl should be used with caution until more robust evidence is available.
Regarding the assessment of included studies, using 24-hour CrCl as a reference method, instead of directly measured GFR, was not considered a source of bias. Although directly measured GFR using exogenous substances such as inulin and 51Cr-EDTA as filtration markers represents the gold standard for assessing renal function, 9 its use is limited to research purposes but is not applicable to day-to-day practice. 2 In addition, abbreviated urine collection is not meant to reproduce the GFR values obtained from exogenous substances but to substitute the 24-hour CrCl. Thus, 24-hour CrCl was considered an acceptable reference group in the included studies as it represents the practical reference method.
Isotope dilution mass spectrometry (IDSM) methods for analysis of creatinine levels provide more accurate measurements than the old non-IDMS methods. 27 Some included studies were conducted before the widespread use of IDMS methods. However, non-IDMS analysis is unlikely to have affected the results of these studies because deviations from the true values would have impacted both serum and urine levels and would have canceled out in the calculation of measured creatinine clearance.24,25 Thus, using non-IDMS methods for measuring creatinine was not considered a high risk of bias in the included studies.
Glomerular filtration rate varies throughout the day. 28 Two included studies reported measuring abbreviated CrCl at specific times of the day for all patients to minimize diurnal variability.22,25 In addition, Wilson et al reported that the time of urine collection has no significant impact on the agreement between 2-hour CrCl and 24-hour CrCl in 30 critically ill patients. 24 However, the impact of diurnal variability of GFR and urine collection time on the accuracy of abbreviated CrCl needs to be re-evaluated in larger studies.
The studies included in the current review have several limitations. None of the included studies differentiated between patients with stable renal function and patients with acute kidney injury. Two studies included multiple samples for individual patients,22,25 which may have introduced bias to the results because of the correlation between samples collected from the same patient. In addition, 3 studies23-25 excluded patients with oliguria, limiting the generalizability of their results to patients with this common finding in the ICU. Finally, some of the included studies have limited applicability in contemporary practice as they were published a long time ago and represent different clinical settings. Fluid management in the ICU, for example, has changed over the years, 29 which may substantially impact the values of measured CrCl. Further studies that avoid the previous limitations are needed to establish the role of abbreviated CrCl for drug dosing in adult critically ill patients.
To our knowledge, this is the first review to assess the use of abbreviated urine collection for measuring CrCl in adult critically ill patients. However, it has some limitations. We could not retrieve 4 abstracts (3 studies published as conference abstracts and 1 old study, which did not have full text available online). We contacted the corresponding authors to get the full text, but we did not receive a reply. However, the 3 conference abstracts did not compare abbreviated urine collection to 24-hour CrCl, and it is unlikely that the full text would have such a comparison. In addition, we excluded 1 study published in Chinese due to the inability to extract the accurate details of the study even after translation to English. This excluded study might have included findings relevant to our review.
Relevance to Patient Care and Clinical Practice
Abbreviated urine collection (≤12 hours) is commonly used as an alternative to 24-hour urine collection to measure CrCl for renal drug dosing in critically ill patients. Inaccurate measurement of CrCl may lead to inappropriately high or low doses of renally excreted medications, which exposes critically ill patients to a higher risk of adverse events or therapeutic failure, respectively. This review evaluated the accuracy of abbreviated urine collection compared with the 24-hour collection for measuring CrCl in critically ill adult patients.
Conclusion
The evidence on the usefulness of abbreviated urine collection for measuring CrCl is scarce and of limited quality. This evidence suggests that measured CrCl using abbreviated urine collection does not adequately replace 24-hour CrCl due to measurement bias and imprecision. Using abbreviated urine collection for CrCl measurement may overestimate CrCl, resulting in dosing recommendations above those based on 24-hour CrCl. Large prospective high-quality studies are needed to re-evaluate the role of abbreviated urine collection in measuring CrCl. Such studies should utilize measures of bias and precision to compare CrCl measured using different durations of abbreviated urine collection to 24-hour CrCl.
Supplemental Material
sj-docx-1-aop-10.1177_10600280241241820 – Supplemental material for Abbreviated Urine Collection Compared With 24-Hour Urine Collection for Measuring Creatinine Clearance in Adult Critically Ill Patients: A Systematic Review
Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-aop-10.1177_10600280241241820 for Abbreviated Urine Collection Compared With 24-Hour Urine Collection for Measuring Creatinine Clearance in Adult Critically Ill Patients: A Systematic Review by Mohamed Omar Saad, Adham Mohamed and Mohamed Izham Mohamed Ibrahim in Annals of Pharmacotherapy
Footnotes
Appendices
Risk of Bias Assessment With Justification.
| PATIENT SELECTION | INDEX TEST | REFERENCE STANDARD | FLOW AND TIMING | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wilson and Soullier 24 | Not stated whether all consecutive patients within a specific duration were included or a random sample of patients was selected |
Not all 2-hour samples were collected at the same time of serum creatinine |
|
Number of analyzed samples is not reported |
| Sladen et al. 25 | Not stated whether all consecutive patients within a specific duration were included or a random sample of patients was selected |
|
|
95 samples from 19 patients (correlated observations from the same patients) |
| Robert et al. 23 |
|
|
|
|
| Cherry et al. 22 |
|
Serum creatinine was not collected during the time of urine collection (2 hours before the first collection). 3 consecutive collections compared with each other, there was a gap between the first and the last collection. |
Serum creatinine was not collected during the time of urine collection (2 hours before the first collection) |
131 sample sets from 100 patients (correlated observations from the same patients) |
| Herrera-Gutierrez et al. 9 |
|
|
|
15% of patients dropped out but no difference in the baseline characteristics between those who dropped out and the rest of the study population. |
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
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References
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