Type 1 cardiorenal syndrome is one of the major diseases threatening human life in China. The incidence of acute kidney injury (AKI) associated with acute heart failure (AHF), acute myocardial infarction (AMI), cardiac surgery, and coronary angiography has been reported to be 32.2, 14.7, 40.2, and 4.5%, respectively. In the past 2 years, we derived and validated 4 risk scores for the prediction of AKI associated with the above acute heart diseases as well as for examination and treatment in Chinese cohorts. A univariable comparison and a subsequent multivariate logistic regression analysis of the potential predictive variables of AKI in the derivation set were conducted and used to establish the prediction scores, which were then verified in the validation set. The area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve and the Hosmer-Lemeshow goodness-of-fit statistic test were performed to assess the discrimination and calibration of the prediction scores, respectively. These 4 prediction scores all showed adequate discrimination (area under the ROC curve, >= 0.70) and good calibration (p > 0.05). Both Forman's risk score (for AKI associated with AHF) and Mehran's risk score (for AKI associated with coronary angiography) are widely applied around the world. The external validation of these 2 risk scores was performed in our patients, but their discriminative power was quite low (area under the ROC curve, 0.65 and 0.57, respectively). Therefore, these prediction scores derived from Chinese cohorts might be more accurate than those derived from different races when they are applied in Chinese patients. (C) 2014 S. Karger AG, Basel.