N-Acetylcysteine to Prevent Radiocontrast Nephropathy in Emergency Department Patients

Multiple agents have been studied to prevent radiocontrast nephropathy. One of these agents is N-Acetylcysteine. Previous trials to assess N-Acetylcysteine's efficacy in the prevention of contrast nephropathy have been promising. However, previous studies have limited applicability to the Emergency Department (ED) patient population for two reasons: * 1) Many of the pretreatment strategies employed in these studies take several hours or even days to perform, which is not feasible in acutely ill ED patients. * 2) Most of these studies were conducted in patients undergoing cardiac catheterization. This may be a very different population than patients in the ED undergoing abdominal or chest computed tomography. The investigators wish to study the efficacy of N-acetylcysteine as an agent to prevent radiocontrast nephropathy in ED patients undergoing computerized tomography. The investigators propose a randomized, double-blind, controlled trial comparing saline hydration plus N-acetylcysteine versus saline hydration alone. The hypothesis of this study is that N-acetylcysteine with normal saline will be more effective than saline alone in the prevention of radiocontrast nephropathy.