Acute renal and splenic infarctions: a review

Renal and splenic infarctions are close entities, with few data concerning their clinical, biological and radiological features.

The aim of this study was to compare the clinical presentations, etiologies and outcomes of acute renal infarctions (RI) and splenic infarctions (SI).

A retrospective multicentric cohort study included patients of the 6 university hospitals in Lyon with RI, SI, or associated RI-SI infarctions was conducted.

All consecutive cases diagnosed by CT imaging, between January 2013 and October 2016, were included. The exclusion criteria were causes of infarction that did not require additional investigations.

A total of 161 patients were selected for analysis: 34 patients with RI, 104 patients with SI and 23 patients with both RI-SI. Mean ± SD age of patients was 63.2 ± 16.6 years; 59.6% were male. Only 5/161 (3.1%) were healthy prior to the event. The main symptoms were diffuse abdominal pain (26.4%), followed by nausea/vomiting (18.3%) and fever (16.4%).The causes of RI or SI varied significantly within the three groups. Hypercoagulable state was associated with SI, and embolic disease and arterial injury were associated with RI. Extensive (i.e.>2/3 of organ volume) (OR 6.22, 95%CI 2.0119.22) and bilateral infarctions (OR 15.05, 95%CI 1.79-126.78) were significantly associated with hemodynamic shocks. The survival at 1 month follow-up did not significantly differ between the three groups.

Acute RI and SI are heterogenous entities in regards to their clinical presentation, etiology, associated venous or arterial thrombosis, but prognoses were not different at short term follow-up.