Surgical versus medical treatment in renovascular hypertension. Retrospective study of 166 cases.

A retrospective study of 166 cases of renovascular hypertension was performed. Before 1979, 114 patients were treated for renovascular hypertension. Forty underwent surgery. In this group, therapy resulted in cure or improvement in 45% of the patients. Seventy-four patients underwent medical therapy: 88% of these patients had improvement of blood pressure when beta-blockers were used, but only 41% when they were not. More recently (from 1979 to 1983), 52 patients were treated for renovascular hypertension, of which 31 patients have been operated for fibromuscular renal artery stenosis (62%) or atherosclerotic renal artery stenosis (32%). In this group, 90% of the patients were considered to be cured or improved with a mean follow-up of 36 months. Eighteen of thirty-one patients underwent autotransplantation with satisfactory results on blood pressure control. Twenty-one patients were treated by antihypertensive drugs: 86% of the patients were improved or cured (71.5% of the patients had atherosclerotic lesions) with a mean follow-up of 46.8 months.