ALB and acute kidney injury: Furthermore, a recent analysis of factors associated with hospital-acquired AKI following cardiac surgery enumerated the following as identifiable risk factors – older age, higher preoperative creatinine, higher plasma glucose level, lower left ventricular ejection fraction, high preoperative blood urea nitrogen (>20 mg/dL), high creatinine level (>1 mg/dL), high uric acid (>7 mg/dL) and lower albumin (<4 g/dL) or lower intraoperative hemoglobin (<8 g/dL) had a higher risk for postoperative AKI (2).