Initial Experience with Renal Denervation for the Treatment of Resistant Hypertension - The Utility of Novel Anesthetics and Metaiodobenzylguanidine Scintigraphy (MIBG).

Background: The Symplicity-HTN 3 trial failed to show significant difference in blood pressure (BP) lowering between patients undergoing catheter-based renal denervation (RDN) and the sham-procedure arm of the study. However, there is still optimism about the role of RDN in the treatment of resistant hypertension, because identification of patients with increased sympathetic activity thus being good RDN responders, improvements in the RDN procedure and new technology RDN catheters are all expected to lead to better RDN results. We present our initial experience with RDN for the treatment of resistant hypertension, and the utility of novel anesthetics and cardiac 123 I-metaiodobenzylguanidine scintigraphy ( 123 I-MIBG).