Emboli are usually not limited to the renal arteries. If emboli travel to the extremities, such symptoms as a purplish netlike discoloration of the skin, painful muscle nodules, and even gangrene may result. Emboli that travel to an eye may cause sudden blindness. Diagnosis and Treatment Kidney failure is diagnosed easily with blood tests. Cortical necrosis results from obstruction of the small arteries to the kidney cortex, which can be caused by many conditions.
Cortical necrosis can occur at any age.
About 10 percent of the cases occur in infancy and childhood. In children, cortical necrosis may follow an infection, dehydration, shock, or the hemolytic-uremic syndrome. In adults, bacterial sepsis causes a third of all cases of cortical necrosis. Symptoms Cortical necrosis may resemble other types of kidney failure. However, doctors suspect cortical necrosis when urine production decreases suddenly and radically without evidence of obstruction in the ureters or bladder and blood is found in the urine of a person who has a condition that may cause cortical necrosis.