Dilatation of renal artery stenosis (RAS) in patients with atherosclerotic renovascular disease (ARVD) has no effect on renal perfusion, according to a new study.

Niina Koivuviita, MD, of Turku University Hospital in Turku, Finland, and colleagues studied 17 patients with ARVD, seven with chronic kidney disease (CKD) but no renovascular disease, and 10 healthy volunteers. The indication for all revascularizations was refractory or treatment-resistant hypertension. All patients except one received a stent during the angioplasty procedure. The researchers measured single-kidney perfusion noninvasively with positron emission tomography (PET) and radiolabeled water.

At baseline, renal perfusion correlated inversely with degree of RAS, Dr. Koivuviita’s group reported online in Nephrology Dialysis Transplantation. The mean cortical renal perfusion value in ARVD patients was 1.49 mL/min/g tissue at baseline and 1.40 mL/min/g tissue after revasularization, a nonsignificant difference. For comparison, the mean value for the healthy volunteers and CKD patients was 1.82 and 1.26 mL/min/g tissue, respectively. Perfusion did not correlate with estimated glomerular filtration rate in the ARVD patients.


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