Nephrectomy in adults : Asir hospital experience

Abstract EN

We retrospectively analysed the clinical data and investigations of 85 adult patients who underwent nephrectomy at a referral hospital in Asir region.

The patients were fairly young with mean age of 44 years except those with transitional cell carcinoma of the upper urinary tract who had a mean age of 67 years.

The male to female ratio was 1.9:1 and there was slight predominance of right sided lesions.

Loin pain was the leading presenting feature with only a few cases presenting with hematuria and some with a loin mass.

The leading indication for nephrectomy was chronic obstruction culminating in end-stage pyelonephritis (65%), followed by malignancy of kidneys and upper urinary tract (22%).

Fifty six percent of the cases with obstruction had associated upper urinary tract stones.

Ultrasonography and intravenous urography were excellent in the evaluation of clinically significant obstruction but many ancillary imaging procedure were needed to evaluate the nature of the obstructing lesion.

We conclude that obstructive nephropathy is the main cause for nephrectomy in Asir, with urolithiasis implicated in more than half of the cases of obstruction.