Postmortem evaluation of renal, coronary and cerebral vascular lesions in chronic kidney disease

Abstract

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a complex disease in which renal damage is frequently associated with cardiovascular and cerebral complications. The aim of our study was to establish if kidney vascular lesions are accompanied by atherosclerotic lesions on the aorta, the coronary and cerebral arteries.Vascular lesions of 364 violent death cases were analyzed based on data provided by necropsy reports. Aortic, coronary and cerebral lesions were identified by macroscopic examination, while renal lesions were detected by light microscopy. The mean age of the subjects was 55.61+ 10.57 (42, 86). Atherosclerotic lesions on the coronary arteries were present at 65.4% of the subjects, while 62.6% had atherosclerotic lesions on the aorta and 60.2% on the arteries of the circle of Willis. Renal vascular lesions were encountered in 95 cases, representing 26.09% of all subjects. The subjects with renal vascular lesions also presented coronary, cerebral and aortic vascular lesions in 89.5% of the cases. Thus, these subjects presented significantly more such lesions than the subjects without renal vascular lesions did (p