Recovery from Acute Renal Failure After 23 Days of Anuria

PROLONGED SURVIVAL of human beings without significant renal function has been made possible by repeated treatments with the artificial kidney.1-7Recoveries have been recorded in patients with acute renal failure after 34 days of oliguria,3,5but recovery after prolonged periods of total urinary suppression has been distinctly rare and may indicate a prognostic distinction between oliguria (less than 400 ml a day) and anuria (less than 25 ml a day). We recently treated a patient who developed acute renal failure after abortion complicated by Clostridium welchii sepsis. The 23-day-long anuria seemed to indicate an extremely poor prognosis and may have been related to delay in eradicating a residual uterine abscess which was a site of Clostridial infection. Nevertheless, the patient finally entered a short oliguric and then a diuretic phase, and ultimately recovered. Although other cases of anuria lasting from 22½ to 30 days without dialytic therapy have