A 37-year-old woman, while being treated with nitroprusside for acute hypertension due to an intramural renal artery hemorrhage, became blind on the fourth hospital day, comatose on the fifth, and brain dead on the seventh. Postmortem examination of her brain revealed border-zone infarcts in the parietal-occipital regions and cerebrellum of the sort associated with cerebral hypoperfusion due to hypotension. Yet her blood pressure had been lowered judiciously to a mean pressure in the vicinity of 110 to 120 mm Hg, and episodes of hypotension had been avoided. As possible explanations for this unusual complication, the roles of acute hyperangiotensinemia and nitroprusside administration are discussed.

The diagnostic usefulness of the timed intravenous pyelogram (IVP), isotopic renal flow study (renal flow), stimulated plasma renin activity (SPRA), saralasin infusion test, and renal vein renins (RVR) in detecting possible renal vascular hypertension was studied in relation to age. Among patients who had been off medication for 2 weeks and who had normal renal X-ray findings, the percentage of those with a high SPRA dropped from 22.3% in those aged 20-29 to 4.2% in those aged 60-69 years, and that in those showing a positive saralasin test dropped from 8.3% in those aged 20-29 to 4.3% in those aged 60-69. But among those with abnormal renal X-ray findings, the percentage rose from 5.7% to 20% (high SPRA) and from 16.3% to 33% (positive saralasin test). A high SPRA or positive saralasin detected a renal abnormality in 11.7% and 50%, respectively, of patients aged 20-29, and 75% and 85.7%, respectively, of those aged 60-69. The percentage of all patients on or off medication with abnormal renal X-ray findings and a renal vein renin ratio>> 1.5 increased from 14.2% among those aged 20-29 to 84.2% among those aged 60-69. The results indicate an increasing usefulness with age of a high SPRA or a positive saralasin test in indicating an abnormal renal X-ray and an abnormal renal vein renin ratio, and thus a potentially correctable lesion.