Anyone with Renal Artery Stenosis?

In 2018 I was also diagnosed with renal artery stenosis. I had pain in my side so a scan was taken. The scan results stated that there was kidney atrophy as a result of the stenosis. It was too late to do anything. My kidneys were only working at 30% at that point and are still the same now. (30% due to other factors besides the stenosis, e.g. heart disease. diabetes).

Something positive:
I’ve read If it’s caught early enough that stents can be inserted to open the artery to avoid atrophy.

Wishing you all the best.

Thank you for your reply. I don’t see my Dr. until Friday so am sitting on these results not knowing what they mean. Thank you for the well wishes. I just joined this site to hopefully share with others with health issues. Best to you as well. : )

@pattyupmi welcome to Mayo Clinic Connect. @mcgirene thank you for sharing your story. Hopefully more members will join in this discussion soon. @pattyupmi will you let us know how your upcoming appointment goes? How are feeling?

Thank you so much for the warm welcome. It's so nice to be able to have somewhere to be able to share with others and hopefully support and possibly exchange helpful information. Still trying to understand how to navigate this platform but I'm sure I'll figure it out. I'm feeling fine but will feel better once I hear what they say at my appointment (hopefully). Knowledge is always good. Then you know how to move forward. : )

Dr. appointment went much better than I anticipated. He said even though I have Renal Artery Stenosis in my right kidney, my kidneys are working good. He will do another Dopplar Ultrasound in 6 months and if everything is looking good, will do one a year. Evidently Renal Artery Stenosis is somewhat common (I think I understood that correctly) and it depends on the severity of the stenosis. My potassium levels came down from up over 5 to 4. I had been drinking Powerade daily, eating quite a bit of things with sugar and diet pops…. Sodium. This has been a real eye opener that at age 65, it’s extremely important to my organs, what I put in my body. I take blood pressure and cholesterol medication and will now monitor my diet and exercise.

@pattyupmi An ultrasound found stenosis for me but it ruled out a tumor so I never heard back from anyone. I wonder if this had any bearing on 8 hours of memory loss I recently experienced. I know I had been pushing fluids (water) and my blood sodium was 128. The hospital thought it was a TIA but I keep thinking it was a sodium deficit augmented by poor kidney performance.

Hopefully, you will get some clear answers on why the memory loss. I wonder if any testing can show whether it was a TIA. Best of luck to you. : )

@pattyupmi Thank you for I had a lot of testing but there were no clear signs of stroke other than my memory loss and slurred speech. I got better once an IV was administered, which led me to think that perhaps this event was hyponatremia, even at 128 blood sodium, vs a TIA.