Renal autotransplantation in the treatment of hypertensive disease associated with unilateral renal artery stenosis.

Renal autotransplantation was performed on 15 subjects with renovascular hypertensive disease owing to unilateral renal artery stenosis. Kidney survival was achieved in 14 cases. Followup for a minimum of 6 months showed 50 per cent of the patients to be cured, 28 per cent improved and 22 per cent unchanged according to the criteria described herein. There was an 85 per cent cure rate among a subgroup of patients less than 35 years old, with less than 20 months of hypertension and non-atherosclerotic lesions. Plasma renin assay was not found to be a good prognostic indicator as reported previously. In our hands the method showed only a 70 per cent correlation with the final results. Non-atherosclerotic lesions had a better prognosis.