["Ex-situ" reconstructive surgery of the renal arteries]

The paper sums up our experience with kidneys which have undergone "bench" extracorporeal arterial surgery. The reasons making this procedure necessary were: renal graft from corpse donor presenting multiple arteries or arterial lesions (12 cases); orthoptic kidneys with stenotic lesions or arterial aneurism (5 cases); transplanted grafts which developed renal artery stenosis (2 cases). Incidence of arterial thrombosis and ureteral fistula was significantly higher in the first group than in grafts where no "bench" surgery had been performed. Medium- and long-term actuarial survival, however, showed no difference. In the second and third groups, extracorporeal arterial reconstructive surgery is a technique with a high risk for the loss of the involved renal unit.