Symmetrical Cortical Necrosis of the Kidneys in Infancy and Childhood

Symmetrical cortical necrosis of the kidneys is very uncommon. Apparently the first authentic desciption of the condition was given by Juhel- Renoy in Paris in 1883, the patient being a young woman aged sixteen years. Since that time about one hundred cases have been published, most of them in the last twenty years. The disease is best known as a complication of pregnancy, but it may occur in non-pregnant women, males, and children; about two-thirds of the reported cases have been associated with pregnancy and many of the rainder with bacterial infection. Duff and More, who reviewed the literature up to 1941, analysed seventy-one cases, forty-eight associated and twenty- three not associated with pregnancy; but Dunn and Montgomery, in the same year, published fifteen cases of which only seven were associated with pregnancy. The age distribution of cases not associate& with pregnancy has been widely scattered through childhood, adoleence, and maturity, and there has not been any significnt difference in the sex incidence in this group.