Renal-aortic ratio as an objective measure of renal artery diameter a computed tomography angiography study

Abstract

BackgroundConsidering vital role of renal arteries in many surgical procedures, diameter of renal arteries seems to be an important measure of kidney perfusion. In this study, we analyzed a new parameter, renal-aortic ratio (R-Ar) as an objective measure of the renal artery diameter.MethodThe study included CT angiographic images from 254 patients (129 women and 125 men). R-Ar was calculated by dividing the diameter of the main renal artery for each kidney by the aortic diameter.ResultsR-Ar values for the whole study group ranged between 0.0863 and 0.5083; the ranges of R-Ar values for women and men patients were 0.1150–0.5083 and 0.0863–0.4449, respectively. In 412 cases (81.10%), the kidney was supplied by a single renal artery (RA variant) and in 96 (18.90%) by more than one artery (sRA variant). A significant difference was found in R-Ar values for RA and sRA variants (p = 0.0008). When the anatomical variant of renal perfusion was not considered on statistical analysis, a significant difference was found between the R-Ar values for women and men (p = 0.0259). No statistically significant difference was observed in R-Ar values for the right and left kidneys (p = 0.3123). Spearman’s coefficient of rank correlation between patient age and renal-aortic ratio values for the whole study group equaled − 0.36.ConclusionThe analysis of the renal-aortic ratio values demonstrated that the diameter of renal arteries depended primarily on their number, and the relative diameter of renal arteries in women was larger than in men.