Renal Artery Injury Secondary to Blunt Abdominal Trauma – Two Case Reports

Abstract

SummaryBackgroundBlunt abdominal trauma is routinely encountered in the Emergency Department. It is one of the main causes of morbidity and mortality amongst the population below the age of 35 years worldwide. Renal artery injury secondary to blunt abdominal trauma however, is a rare occurrence. Here, we present two such cases, encountered in the emergency department sustaining polytrauma following motor vehicle accidents.Case ReportWe hereby report two interesting cases of renal artery injury sustained in polytrauma patients. In these two cases we revealed almost the entire spectrum of findings that one would expect in renal arterial injuries.ConclusionsTraumatic renal artery occlusion is a rare occurrence with devastating consequences if missed on imaging. Emergency radiologists need to be aware of the CT findings so as to accurately identify renal artery injury. This case report stresses the need for immediate CT assessment of polytrauma patients with suspected renal injury, leading to timely diagnosis and urgent surgical or endovascular intervention.

Kidney Salvage with Renal Artery Reconstruction after Blunt Traumatic Injury

“…Our patient's renal artery injury was severe. This is in contrast to what renal artery injury patients have who generally had minor renal artery injuries and underwent conservative management [1,2,10]. In a cohort published by Sangthong et al, only 8.7% of patients underwent operative renal artery reconstruction [2].…”

Traumatic renal artery occlusion secondary to blunt trauma in a second-trimester pregnant woman who managed successfully with non-operative management: A rare case report

“…Since Von Recklinghausen initially characterized it in 1861, less than a thousand cases have been published in the literature. 4 Blunt renal injuries in pregnancy are seldom isolated, with resultant renal vascular injury following this type of injury being extremely rare. The U. S. National Trauma Databank reviewed 945,326 patients with blunt trauma.…”

“… 3 Zahoor Ahmed et al reported two young male cases of traumatic renal artery occlusions following polytrauma. 4 The first patient underwent emergency nephrectomy, while the other case underwent endovascular revascularization. Unfortunately, due to prolonged ischemia revascularization was not achieved.…”