[Salmonella infection complicated with acute renal failure]

Acute renal failure is a known complication to Salmonella gastroenteritis, and patients with chronic renal failure or impaired host defence are at increased risk. In the two presented cases there had been a few days of gastroenteritis before the hospitalisation, but the only symptoms at the admission were fatigue and dyspnoea. In both cases severe uraemia had developed and the patients and their physicians did not expect the episode of gastroenteritis to be the only etiology of acute renal failure. Both patients had normal renal histology and Salmonella was grown in their faeces. Subsequently, their renal function was normalised. In these patients dialysis and renal biopsies would have been unnecessary if the ability of even a moderate Salmonella infection to cause acute renal failure in a healthy subject had been realised and prompt rehydration had been initiated.