Acute renal failure in a patient with essential thrombocythemia, diabetes mellitus, and heterozygous hemoglobin C disease.

A 31-year-old black diabetic man had acute oliguric renal failure. Retrograde pyelography showed filling defects in the ureters, presumably blood clots. Essential thrombocythemia was subsequently diagnosed. We believe no such presentation of essential thrombocythemia has been previously described in the English literature.