Some clinical studies published before year 2014 raised consistent expectations worldwide on a promising role of catheter-based renal artery denervation (RAD) in the management of patients with elevated blood pressure (BP) [1,2]. Unfortunately, the randomized SHAM-controlled trial SIMPLICITY HTN-3, published in year 2014 in the The New England Journal of Medicine and conducted in 535 patients with resistant hypertension despite three or more antihypertensive drugs (office systolic BP >160 mmHg and average 24-h ambulatory BP > 135 mmHg) failed to demonstrate the superiority of RAD over the SHAM procedure in terms of office systolic BP reduction at 6 months (primary outcome) [3].
