Renal parenchymal disease and hypertension.

Renal refers to the kidneys and there are basically two sub types of renal medical conditions, vascular and parenchymal.Vascular refers to medical conditions that involve the blood vessels and parenchymal refers to medical conditions involving the tissue, therefore renal parenchymal disease refers to diseases that involve the kidney tissue.There can be parenchymal disease in other organs of the body such as the lungs.
When renal parenchymal disease is seen on an ultrasound it means that the kidney has lost part or all of its function.The kidney can be scarred or damaged because of disease making it unable to function properly, therefore resulting in the kidney losing the ability to filter waste products properly.There are several medical conditions that can cause renal scarring.
The kidneys produce hormones, regulate chemicals in the blood and remove waste and excess fluid from the body.Urine produced by the kidneys involves several complex steps.Processing by the kidneys and urine production is a necessary part of providing a stable balance of chemicals within the body.
Renal parenchymal disease is the most common cause of secondary hypertension, accounting for 2.5% to 5.0% of all cases.Hypertension associated with renal parenchymal disease occurs as a complication of a wide variety of glomerular and interstitial renal diseases and may accelerate the decline in renal function if inadequately controlled.
Renal parenchymal hypertension most probably represents the combined interactions of multiple independent mechanisms: potential factors include impaired sodium handling leading to volume expansion, perturbations of the renin-angiotensin system, alterations in endogenous vasodepressor compounds, and possibly increased activity of vasoactive substances.
In patients who have hypertension and a unilateral small kidney, hypertension may have either a vascular (renal artery stenosis) or nonvascular (urologic) cause.Generally, the hypertension can be attributed to the abnormal-sized kidney, and nephrectomy of the shrunken kidney or correction of the stenotic artery will result in the normalization of blood pressure.The abnormal-sized kidney was considered to be due to either agenesis or dysplasia and reflux.Successful anatomic correction of the stenotic artery without surgery on the contralateral small kidney resulted in the normalization of blood pressure.Although the diseased kidney was thought to be the cause of the high blood pressure, these patients were unique in that they had a stenosis of the contralateral renal artery of the fibrodysplasia type, which was predominantly localized in the distal part of the artery and frequently extended into the peripheral branches.
Certain medications such as chemotherapy medications, pesticides and illegal drugs can also cause severe damage the kidneys and kidney tissues.Some of the warning signs for any renal disease are:
Difficulty urinating, or painful urination;Frequent urination;Blood in the urine;Swelling of the face especially around the eyes, or edema in the feet and hands;Back pain just below the ribcage;Hypertension.

Some renal diseases can be treated, however when the kidney disease progresses to kidney failure it may ultimately require dialysis or kidney transplantation.Kidney conditions such as infections and stones can often be easily treated.Chronic renal inflammation is however commonly seen kidney disease, and can slowly progress to kidney failure if not properly treated.