[Late renal and hypertensive complications of extracorporeal lithotripsy. Myth or reality?]

Extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy (ESWL) has produced dramatic advances in the surgical management of urinary calculi. However this new procedure could induce deleterious effects as loss of renal function and hypertension. Animal studies show that ESWL induces focal areas of necrosis and subsequent fibrosis in renal tissue. In humans, imaging technics demonstrate renal alterations in 80% of the patients. Acute renal hemodynamic and functional changes is frequent but transient in most of the cases. Some studies have shown a tendancy to an increase in blood pressure related to a decrease in renal plasma flow in one study. However most of these results are based on retrospective surveys of blood pressure and renal function. Therefore prospective clinical trials are needed to investigate the important questions of ESWL-induced hypertension and decrease renal function.