RESEARCH ARTICLE
Renal Artery Embolism: Prospective Study of 41 Patients Based on a Diagnostic and Therapeutic Algorithm
Joan Fort1, *, Alfons Segarra11, Manel Matas2, Antonio Segarra3, Joaquim Camps1
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2008Volume: 1
First Page: 9
Last Page: 15
Publisher ID: TOUNJ-1-9
DOI: 10.2174/1874303X00801010009
Article History:
Received Date: 11/1/2008Revision Received Date: 7/2/2008
Acceptance Date: 11/2/2008
Electronic publication date: 21/2/2008
Collection year: 2008
open-access license: This is an open access article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the work is properly cited.
Abstract
Renal artery embolism (RAE) is an underdiagnosed condition leading to acute renal failure in patients with a single functioning kidney. We prospectively studied 41 patients according to a previously validated algorithm based on Lactate Dehydrogenase (LDH) determination., which enables us to identify RAE patients and allocate them to a different protocolled treatment.
The most frequent symptom was atypical low back pain. Atrial fibrillation was present in 65.8% of patients. The most frequent site of the embolism was the main renal artery of a single kidney. Surgery was performed in 13 patients., fibrino-lytic treatment in 17 and anticoagulation in 11. Mean LDH levels were 1690 ± 1108 U/L. Oliguria was present in 15 pa-tients. Hemodialysis requirements were not different between patients with main RAE or intrarenal embolism., or according to treatment group.
Conclusions:
Our results indicate that the use of a diagnostic algorithm based on LDH values is useful for identifying RAE patients. Further randomized trials are needed to compare results on treatment.
