Distal Renal Denervation

Recent spectacular failure of renal denervation (RDN) therapy in SymplicityHTN-3 trial in fact might be easily predicted from the very beginning. Conventional RDN done as 4-6 point treatments equally distributed within main trunk of renal artery (RA) may only be effective if renal plexus tightly surrounds the artery throughout its whole course with equal longitudinal and circumferential density of the nerve fibers. While this idea itself is unnaturally idealistic also a number of surgical studies demonstrated that proximally majority of renal nerves go at a distance from RA obliquely to its course and join the artery mainly in its distal part (fan-shaped renal plexus with wide base directed toward aorta and apex converging to renal gate). We developed a distal mode of RDN targeting segmental branches of RA and conducted a single-center double-blind randomized controlled parallel group study to compare its efficacy and safety to those of conventional RDN in patients with drug-resistant hypertension.