Clinical usefulness of duplex ultrasonography for the assessment of renal arteriosclerosis in essential hypertensive patients

The present study was carried out to investigate whether the renal resistiv e index (RRI), obtained by ultrasonic duplex scanning, is useful for the ev aluation of renal arteriosclerosis in essential hypertensive patients. We a lso studied the relationships between RRI and other kinds of hypertensive t arget-organ damage, including carotid atherosclerosis. One hundred and two patients (56.4+/-9.4 years) with untreated mild or moderate essential hyper tension were examined, The normal range of RRI was determined for 12 normal age-matched volunteers (55.0+/-6.6 years). Hypertensive organ damage was e valuated by funduscopy, electrocardiograms, and carotid B-mode imaging. Bas ed on the mean and distribution of RRI in normal volunteers (0.60+/-0.05), the normal upper limit of RRI was found to be 0.7. RRI was correlated with creatinine clearance (CCr) (r=--0.61, p<0.05), and blood urea nitrogen (r=0 .46, p<0.05), but not with serum creatinine, in addition, the incidence of abnormal RRI(>0.7) was higher in patients with left ventricular hypertrophy and in those with advanced carotid atherosclerosis (p<0.01, respectively), Thus, RRI appears to be more strongly associated with CCr than with serum creatinine, and it increases in patients with hypertensive end-organ damage , The assessment of RRI may be useful for the evaluation of early renal dam age in essential hypertension.