HCM CITY – Doctors at Trưng Vương Hospital have successfully performed their first endovascular intervention on a patient with renal infarct, a rare condition with nonspecific symptoms.

The procedure was done last month on a 51-year-old man from HCM City’s District 8 who, after experiencing acute abdominal pain for two days, bought medicine at a pharmacy to reduce the pain. After the pain became worse, the man was admitted to the hospital for emergency aid.

A CAT scan at the hospital showed that blood clots were blocking the patient’s blood supply to his left kidney, said Ngô Minh Tuấn, head of the hospital’s digital subtraction angiography department.

The infarction had lasted 36 hours, which can lead to necrosis of 20 per cent of kidney tissue.

Endovascular intervention, a minimally invasive procedure, was used by doctors to remove the blood clot.

They used a 2-mm tube threaded into an artery in a thigh and a renal artery to remove the blood clot, and placed a balloon device inside the artery to help blood flow easily to the kidney.

This was the first time the hospital had used endovascular intervention to treat renal infarct, Tuấn said.

Patients with renal infarct previously had been treated with antithrombotic medicines or medicine that breaks down blood clots.

"But such medicine cannot completely remove clots, leaving a high risk of kidney tissue necrosis," Tuấn said.

If the condition is not treated in a timely fashion, kidney tissue could die from kidney failure. The kidney would no longer be able to filter water and toxins from blood.

The condition’s symptoms are often only abdominal pain, which can be mistaken for a stomachache. –VNS