Are intravenous injections of contrast media really less nephrotoxic than intra-arterial injections?

We oppose the opinion that the intra-arterial administration of iodine-based contrast media (CM) appears to pose a greater risk of contrast medium-induced nephropathy (CIN) than intravenous administration since 1) in intra-arterial coronary procedures and most other intra-arterial angiographic examinations, CM injections are also intravenous relative to the kidneys, 2) there is a lack of comparative trials studying the risk of CIN between intra-arterial and intravenous procedures with matched risk factors and CM doses, 3) a bias selection of patients with fewer risk factors may explain the seemingly lower rate of CIN after CT in comparison with coronary interventions, 4) the rate of CIN following intra-arterial coronary procedures may also be exaggerated owing to other causes of acute kidney failure, such as haemodynamic instability and microembolisation, 5) roughly the same gram-iodine/GFR ratio (≈1:1) as a limit of relatively safe CM doses has preliminarily been found for both intravenous CT and intra-arterial coronary procedures and 6) the substantially higher injected intravenous CM dose rate during CT relative to an intra-arterial coronary procedure might actually pose a higher risk of CIN following CT. • Most intra-arterial injections of contrast media are intravenous relative to the kidneys. • No evidence that intravenous CM injections should be less nephrotoxic than intra-arterial. • Considerably higher dose rates of CM are used for CT relative to intra-arterial procedures. • Higher dose rates may pose higher nephrotoxic risk for intravenous based CT studies.

Citation

Ulf Nyman, Torsten Almén, Bo Jacobsson, Peter Aspelin. Are intravenous injections of contrast media really less nephrotoxic than intra-arterial injections? European radiology. 2012 Jun;22(6):1366-71

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PMID: 22307815

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