Functional diagnostic tests for selecting patients for renal arteriogr
aphy The functional diagnostic tests now available to select patients
for renal arteriography, such as captopril-renal scintigraphy and the
captopril-peripheral vein renin test, have a high degree of diagnostic
accuracy, 70% sensitivity at 90% specificity, but they are still not
good enough to assess the large population of hypertensives for renal
artery stenosis. The use of the angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) in
hibitor challenge and the introduction of a new pharmacon, technetium-
labelled mercapto-triglycine, have not sufficiently increased the valu
e of scintigraphy and further improvement in the near future seems unl
ikely. The use of clinical criteria to identify high-risk patients A m
ore realistic approach to the diagnosis of renal artery stenosis is to
seek simple and sensible clinical criteria to identify high-risk pati
ents. The blood pressure response to 2 months of treatment with a stan
dardized two-drug regimen is a suitable criterion. Interim analysis of
an ongoing prospective multicentre study in the Netherlands indicates
that the prevalence of renal artery stenosis is as high as 25% in pat
ients who are resistant to the combination of 10 mg amlodipine + 50 mg
atenolol, compared with 15% in patients resistant to the combination
of 20 mg enalapril + 25 mg hydrochlorothiazide. When drug resistance i
s used as the selection criterion for arteriography, the total number
of cases detected with intra-arterial digital subtraction angiography
does not seem to differ according to which of these drug regimens is u
sed. Future possibilities The current enthusiasm for percutaneous tran
sluminal renal angioplasty (PTRA) and stenting may be premature. With
further improvement of non-invasive techniques to visualize the renal
arteries, such as colour Doppler ultrasound with microparticle contras
t enhancement or magnetic resonance angiography, it should become more
attractive to follow patients with renal artery stenosis while they a
re being treated with drugs rather than automatically resorting to PTR
A.