However, simple renal cyst can present with abdominal mass, pain, hematuria, and hypertension. Treatment of symptomatic simple renal cyst is sometimes well justified. Laparoscopic cyst ablation is also recommended as a method of treatment for simple renal cyst. They concluded that the best form of therapy was regular follow-up. Although this form of approach has a definite place in asymptomatic subjects, in patients with severe pain or impairment of renal function or other problems due to the size of the lesion, some form of treatment is mandatory.
Sterile ethanol is a potent sclerosing agent which is readily available and easy to handle.
Alcohol is very slow to penetrate the fibrous capsule of the cyst, thereby allowing sufficient time for its removal before renal parenchymal damage occurs. 1 Bean and Rodan have shown that whereas it requires 4 to 12 hours for the alcohol to penetrate the cyst capsule, after 1 to 3 minutes of contact with the alcohol, the epithelial cell lining the cyst will become fixed and nonviable. 2 Other agents used in the past are either insufficiently effective in destroying the secretory cells lining the cyst wall, or they are too toxic to be used safely. 5 Hanna and Dahniya found six cases of recurrence in 15 patients treated with simple aspiration and one episode of alcohol injection. However, with the use of vacuum in conjunction with ethanol reinjection, all the treated cysts were completely cured during the same follow-up period.