In 45 patients with essential hypertension and 15 age-matched normotensive control subjects, the renal resistive index, as an expression of arterial impedance, was determined using Doppler ultrasound. In both kidneys the resistive index was assessed at baseline and after captopril test (50 mg orally). In the moderate and severe hypertensives, compared to mild hypertensives and control subjects, the baseline resistive index was significantly higher (P less than .05). Following captopril, the resistive index increased only in normotensives (P less than .05) and in mild hypertensives (P less than .05). Univariate and multivariate analyses show that the duration and severity of hypertension correlated with an increase of the resistive index both in basal and in dynamic conditions. Thus, the use of the resistive index, as determined by echo-Doppler, could provide useful information for the assessment of renal vascular impedance in essential hypertensive patients. This would help us detect the evolution of hypertensive disease to the higher degrees of severity that are correlated to renal arteriolar damage.

Ultrasonic duplex scanning has been validated as a noninvasive method to evaluate the kidney arteries and hemodynamic characteristics of renal blood flow in patients with renal artery stenosis. The purpose of our study was to assess the changes in renal vascular impedance in 22 patients with renovascular hypertension, as compared with 45 essential hypertensives and 15 normotensives, by using the Doppler parameter resistance index (RI) before and after a captopril oral test. After the captopril test the delta RI decreased significantly in the stenotic artery (P < 0.05). Univariate analysis showed that PRA values after captopril correlated inversely with the changes of RI only in the stenotic artery (P < 0.05). Thus, our findings suggest that the application of the captopril test to renal echo-Doppler may represent a feasible, noninvasive, and inexpensively useful tool in the screening studies aimed at diagnosing renovascular hypertension.

We report a case of a patient with deep vein thrombosis (DVT) and pulmonary thromboembolism (PTE) associated to portal vein thrombosis (PVT), complicated by hospital-acquired pneumonia (HAP). The pathogenesis of DVT is multifactorial; among risk factors we can list: transitory situations (surgical interventions, infectious diseases with fever, traumas), acquired conditions (neoplasms, antiphospholipid syndrome) or genetically determined situations (thrombophilia). PVT of the sovrahepatic veins is responsible for 5-10% of portal hypertension cases in adults and can be associated to local or systemic infections. PVT is present in 10% of patients with cirrhosis and often associated to cancers. It can also complicate a surgery abdominal intervention. HAP is defined as pneumonia that appears for the first time within 48 h of hospital admission. In Internal Medicine Departments the incidence is 7-10 cases/1.000 of hospital admissions, with an important impact in terms of both mortality and morbility. An early diagnosis, together with a correct identification of microbiologic agents in cause, allows a suitable antibiotic therapy with consequent improvement of clinical prognosis and a meaningful reduction of mortality. Main risk factors are: age, hospital and department. An important variable to be considered is the onset of pneumonia. The later is the onset of HAP (5 or more days from the admission to hospital), the more often is associated to multidrug resistant (MRD) microorganisms, poorly responsive to antibiotic.