Balloon Dilatation for Renal Artery Stenosis Causing Hypertension: Criteria, Concerns, and Cautions

Excerpt

Percutaneous transluminal dilatation of the renal artery using a balloon-tipped catheter may be the most important advance in the management of renal vascular hypertension since the advent of renin measurement. A report in this issue, by the developers of percutaneous transluminal dilatation (1) documents in seven of eight patients the technical feasibility of treating renal vascular hypertension using this technique. Although the number of patients is small and the duration of follow-up short, the study is nonetheless important and its results encouraging. The authors are careful, however, to acknowledge that long-term follow-up data from a randomized comparison with reconstructive vascular