Promising One-Year Results for Renal Denervation in Resistant Hypertension

December 18th, 2012

Promising One-Year Results for Renal Denervation in Resistant Hypertension

Larry Husten, PHD

Denervation of the renal sympathetic nerve may become an important new tool in the fight against resistant hypertension. Previously, the main results of the Symplicity HTN-2 trial demonstrated that in selected patients renal denervation resulted in a large and highly significant reduction in systolic blood pressure (BP) at six months. Now, longer followup from the trial, published in Circulation, demonstrates that the benefits at 6 months extend to one year, and that control patients who crossed over to renal denervation also experienced large reductions in BP.

For 47 patients with resistant hypertension, the reduction in systolic BP at one year (−28.1 mm Hg) was similar to the reduction at 6 months (−31.7 mm Hg). For 35 control patients who crossed over to renal denervation after six months, mean systolic BP dropped from 190.0±19.6 mm Hg before the procedure to 166.3±24.7 mm Hg. The authors reported one case of renal artery dissection in the crossover group, which was fixed with renal artery stenting, and one episode of hypotension, which was fixed with a medication adjustment.

The results, according to a clinical perspective accompanying the article, suggest that “radiofrequency ablation of renal nerves can significantly lower blood pressure in patients with systolic blood pressures >160 mm Hg with no loss of treatment effect through 1 year and thus may provide a safe and effective adjunctive therapy for treatment-resistant hypertensive patients.”

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December 18th, 2012