RESUMO
INTRODUCTION: Renal angiomyolipoma is a benign tumour, but its spontaneous rupture may become threatening for patient's live. Both surgery and selective arterial embolization are accepted treatments for this lesion. OBJECTIVES: Analyze renal angyolipoma treated in our center, their clinical outcome and treatment purposed in each case. MATERIAL AND METHODS: We retrospectively analyse 20 cases of patients with renal angiomyolipoma treated in our centre from March 1996 to March 2006. We describe tumour characteristics, treatment followed and results obtained. RESULTS: Patients suffering from tuberous sclerosis (20%) showed multiple bilateral tumours, with size similar to the rest of patients. Diagnosis of tuberous sclerosis was the only factor attached to spontaneous rupture of those lesions. Four of 9 emergency embolized patients (44.4%) required from second treatment because of recurrent haemorrhage, and 4 of the 16 embolization episodes (25%) presented post-embolization syndrome, both with no predicting factors attached. Reduction of less than one third of the inicial diameter was observed in 58.4% of embolized tumours, which used to be multiple, bilateral and of size larger to the rest. No significative differences were observed in plasmatic creatinine after and before treatments. CONCLUSIONS: Renal angiomyolipoma may behave in an aggressive way in patients with tuberous sclerosis. No predicting factors of recurrent haemorrhage or post-embolization syndrome were observed. Both surgery and arterial embolization have proved not to compromise renal function in treated patients.