Surgery, transluminal dilatation and medical therapy in the management of renovascular hypertension.

In the present retrospective study, the effect of various therapeutic procedures (surgery, percutaneous transluminal dilatation and antihypertensive drugs) was analyzed in 202 patients with renovascular hypertension. The results show that each of the three methods effectively lowers blood pressure. However, marked differences were observed in pretreatment clinical and laboratory data among the three groups. These differences were most probably caused by different selection criteria before submitting the patient to a given therapeutic regime. Our findings also demonstrate that on the basis of the present analysis a direct comparison between surgery, dilatation and medical therapy is not possible.