Renal artery stenosis in patients with established coronary artery disease: Prevalence and predicting factors

The association between renal artery stenosis (RAS) and other atherosclerotic diseases (particularly coronary artery diseases) is well known. In general, the risk factors for atherosclerosis have been clarified, but whether these risk factors operate equally in all forms of atherosclerotic diseases is not known. The aim of this study was to describe the prevalence of RAS in patients with established coronary artery diseases and then to define the most important risk factors that may help to predict the RAS in this population. In this cross-sectional study, 146 patients with established coronary artery stenosis by angiography simultaneously underwent renal angiography; RAS >50% was considered significant. We found that 25.3% of patients with coronary artery diseases had RAS. The prevalence of significant stenosis was 17.1%. Females were more vulnerable to this disorder than males (47.1% vs. 13.7%, P = 0.001). There was no relationship between the severity and number of stenosed coronary arteries and those of stenosed renal arteries (P = 0.716). Multi-variate logistic regression analysis revealed that among the risk factors for atherosclerosis, female sex (P = 0.001), duration of hypertension (P = 0.032), age (P = 0.046) and serum creatinine (P = 0.018) were strong predictors of the presence of RAS. We concluded that RAS is a common finding in patients with coronary artery disease. We suggest that all older females with deteriorating renal function and long-standing hypertension should be carefully evaluated for early detection of the RAS.