Intravascular Ultrasound Can Be Used to Locate Nerves, but not Confirm Ablation, During Renal Sympathetic Denervation.

Background: No methods exist for confirming nerve ablation in catheter-based renal sympathetic denervation (RDN).

Methods: We investigated the feasibility of using intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) to locate nerves and observe nerve integrity changes during RDN in a pig. To confirm our observations, we used post-RDN histological sections matched anatomically to the IVUS images.