Bilateral renal artery stenosis causing acute oliguric renal failure. Report of a case corrected by renovascular surgery

D. Heaney, L. R. Kupor, G. P. Noon and W. N. Suki

A 70-year-old woman with chronic hypertension and previously normal renal function had acute oliguric renal failure requiring hemodialysis. Renal arteriograms revealed the presence of bilateral renal artery stenosis and normal-sized kidneys. Nineteen days after admission to hospital, after undergoing nine hemodialysis procedures, surgical revascularization of renal artery stenosis was performed utilizing a single bypass graft of the left renal artery. Postoperatively, an immediate diuresis ensued, with resolution of acute renal failure. It is critically important in the evaluation of patients with anuria, acute renal failure without obvious cause, or impending uremia in patients with chronic stable renal insufficiency, to consider the possibility of renal artery stenosis or thrombosis. Recognition and then surgical correction of significant renal arterial hypoperfusion allows the reasonable potential for reversibility of this important form of acute or progressive renal failure.