CRP and cardiovascular disorder: After adjusting for confounders associated with both the development of AKI (Table 2) and the level of PEEP applied (Table 3) (including sex, SOFA score, serum creatinine, CRP at the time of ICU entry, and the presence of cardiovascular disease), the risk of developing AKI remained significantly higher in patients with high PEEP compared with those with low PEEP (OR = 4.96 [1.1–21.9] 95% CI p = 0.034) (Table 4).