[Management of hypertension after renal transplantation]

We report the clinical result of our management for post-transplant hypertension in 47 renal allograft recipients who were followed up for more than one year after transplantation. Hypertension developed in 4 (26.7%) out of 15 cases who were treated with conventional immunosuppressive therapy (Group I) and 18 (56.3%) out of 32 cases treated with CsA (Group II). In group I, all the 6 patients who had been nephrectomized their original kidney at the time of transplantation did not develop hypertension. And the blood pressure before transplantation had a marked effect on post-transplant blood pressure. In group II, there were many recipients who had become hypertensive after transplantation though most of them became normotensive with dose reduction of immunosuppressants. Ten normotensive patients before transplantation who had not developed hypertension retained their normal blood pressure throughout the course without any antihypertensive medication. We could find no correlation between graft function and blood pressure, although recipients with poor graft function had a tendency to be hypertensive. A satisfactory fall in blood pressure in the patients treated with CsA was observed when the immunosuppressive regimen was changed to triple therapy to reduce the dose of CsA. The recorded blood pressure were 174.0 +/- 19.0/105.2 +/- 16.5 mmHg after transplantation and 145.2 +/- 15.7/78.4 +/- 17.1 mmHg at the latest follow-up. We performed original nephrectomy in 6 patients whose blood pressure could not have been controlled by the antihypertensive medication. All the venous sampling studies showed that increased renin secretion was confined to original kidneys.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)