N-Acetylcysteine to Prevent Radiocontrast Nephropathy in Emergency Department Patients
Status:
Completed
Trial end date:
2010-08-09
Target enrollment:
Participant gender:
Summary
Multiple agents have been studied to prevent radiocontrast nephropathy. One of these agents
is N-Acetylcysteine. Previous trials to assess N-Acetylcysteine's efficacy in the prevention
of contrast nephropathy have been promising. However, previous studies have limited
applicability to the Emergency Department (ED) patient population for two reasons:
- 1) Many of the pretreatment strategies employed in these studies take several hours or
even days to perform, which is not feasible in acutely ill ED patients.
- 2) Most of these studies were conducted in patients undergoing cardiac catheterization.
This may be a very different population than patients in the ED undergoing abdominal or
chest computed tomography.
The investigators wish to study the efficacy of N-acetylcysteine as an agent to prevent
radiocontrast nephropathy in ED patients undergoing computerized tomography. The
investigators propose a randomized, double-blind, controlled trial comparing saline hydration
plus N-acetylcysteine versus saline hydration alone. The hypothesis of this study is that
N-acetylcysteine with normal saline will be more effective than saline alone in the
prevention of radiocontrast nephropathy.