Advances in diagnosis and treatment of renovascular hypertension.

In approximately 5% of the hypertensive population, hypertension is of a renovascular origin. Some of these patients may be cured of their disease by the modern treatment of transluminal dilatation of the stenosed renal artery. They no longer require hazardous surgery or life-long antihypertensive medication with its associated problems of side-effects, expense, and patient compliance. Decisions need to be made about which hypertensive patients should be investigated, how extensively, and the tests which should be performed to identify patients with this remediable form of hypertension.