MASSDEVICE ON CALL — Renal denervation, studied primarily in treatment of hypertension, may product benefits to heart health independent of those generated by lowering blood pressure, according to researchers reporting results from a small study.
The clinicians cautioned that the results are very early and need confirmation from a larger study, but were worked up about the findings.
"It’s an exciting, provocative result, and there’s a good chance that it will stand the test of time, but I still think in general, it’s best to be cautious about new technologies and relatively small studies, because time typically shows that they provide an overestimate of what the true effects will be," Harvard Medical School’s Dr. Deepak Bhatt told Medscape. "Whether the reduction in left-ventricular mass is beyond what would be anticipated with blood-pressure and heart-rate reduction – certainly this analysis suggests that is a possibility – needs to be confirmed in larger studies."
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