PARIS – A central problem with the SYMPLICITY HTN-3 trial of renal denervation was that the operators were inexperienced with the denervation procedure – and thus a majority of the renal denervations they carried out were not properly performed and left intact too many of the nerves that surround the renal arteries, commented Dr. Richard R. Heuser during the annual congress of the European Association of Percutaneous Cardiovascular Intervention.
"If you don’t get to the nerves and denervate them, you’re not going to have an effect," said Dr. Heuser, professor of medicine at the University of Arizona and chief of cardiology at St. Luke’s Medical Center in Phoenix.
Another limitation of the SYMPLICITY HTN-3 trial (N. Engl. J. Med. 2014;370:1393-1401) was that 25% of its enrolled patients were African Americans, and the trial’s results suggest that this patient subgroup does not respond to renal denervation with a significant fall in blood pressure.
In a video interview at the meeting, Dr. Heuser discussed the trial's potential limitations and renal denervation’s post-SYMPLICITY future.
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