To retrieve and obtain clinical evidence of whether nitrogen excretion should be monitored in critically ill patients with acute kidney injury (AKI) during nutritional therapy, so as to provide evidence to clinical practice.

Available published data (2000.01—2022.08) was retrieved from PubMed, Embase, Web of science, Cochrane Collaboration, CNKI and Wan Fang Data with keywords related with nitrogen excretion in critically ill patients with AKI during nutritional treatment. Further search was performed to identify all available studies. Literature selection and quality assessment of all included studies were performed by two researchers independently.

Seven studies with data for 709 patients were included showing that nitrogen balance could be interfered by renal dysfunction or renal replacement therapy, and negative nitrogen balance may have bad affect on critically ill patients with AKI.

we should pay special attention to nitrogen balance in those patients. Monitoring nitrogen excretion is useful to maintain nitrogen balance and provide evidence for nutritional therapy.