Microcystic Renal Disease and Its Relation to "Infantile Nephrosis"

Abstract

In recent pediatric literature there have appeared several reports of cases in which a renal disturbance was the chief clinical problem; in some instances they have been described as examples of "infantile nephrosis"¹; in others as examples of the "nephrotic syndrome."^2,3 Although the term "nephrosis" continues to appear in received classifications of renal disease along and coequal with such well-defined entities as glomerulonephritis and nephrosclerosis of arteriosclerotic origin, it will be generally agreed that practical difficulties arise for both pathologist and clinician when this term is applied in the designation of a particular case. The original concept of the renal lesions of nephrosis as "degenerative" rather than "inflammatory" is no longer pertinent to modern problems of clinicopathological correlation. More recent suggestions⁴that the term "indicatestubulardisease" are difficult to accept since physiological and electromicroscopic findings⁵show that the most prominent feature of its clinical aspects,