[Isolated dissection of the renal artery. A rare cause of arterial hypertension (author's transl)].

During aetiological investigation of recently developed hypertension in a 31-year-old man, isolated dissection of the upper branch of the right renal artery was discovered. Injection, after sodium depletion, of saralasin, a competitive angiotensin II inhibitor, resulted in significant fall of the mean arterial pressure. During sodium depletion, the plasma renin activity was higher in the right renal artery (17.8 ng/ml/h) than in the left artery (9.4 ng/ml/h) and the infra-renal portion of the inferior vena cava (8.7 ng/ml/h). These figures suggested that surgical treatment of the dissection would have beneficial effects on blood pressure. Six months after resection of the pathological arterial segment and replacement by a graft from the internal saphenous vein, blood pressure had spontaneously returned to normal levels.