Renal artery stenosis and hypertension after abdominal irradiation for Hodgkin disease. Successful treatment with nephrectomy.

Hypertension secondary to stenosis of the left renal artery developed in a thirteen-year-old male six years after completion of inverted Y irradiation (3,600 rad) for abdominal Hodgkin disease. Surgical treatment with nephrectomy resulted in control of the hypertension without the use of antihypertensive agents. We review the literature for this unusual complication of abdominal irradiation, and recommend that a 99mTc-DMSA renal scan, selective renal vein sampling for renin determinations, and renal arteriography be performed on any patient in whom hypertension develops following abdominal irradiation in childhood.