If we talk about kidney disease and brain aneurysms. 9% of polycystic kidney disease patients have brain aneurysms. Dr. P. Roc Chen, MD. Based on a Renal Society study, many patients with polycystic kidney disease have a brain aneurysm rupture before they have renal failure. It's very interesting! - So it's not necessarily known that they have a kidney problem or renal failure or any indications they might actually have another problem in the brain - Right, exactly! And these patients are often being managed by a nephrologist very well, their renal function is compensated. But at the same time they have early intracranial event, which is more troublesome than their kidney problem. Nephrologists are usually quite good to pay attention and follow this issue with a surveillance imaging study (MRI) and that's what we recommend to do every 10 years for patients with a history of familial brain aneurysms or patients with PKD, polycystic kidney disease. For those patients who have been identified to have an intracranial aneurysm, but they don't necessary require surgery or they have not had a brain aneurysm rupture, and at this time have not have any treatment yet, I do think one should think to reduce the risk of aneurysm rupture. Now we know more about inflammatory factors involved during the aneurysm wall repair - tear - repair process. But in general we do think that, again, stopping cigarette smoking, control blood pressure is one of the best beneficial things you can do to yourself to reduce the risk of aneurysm rupture or prevent the rupture. A few years ago there was a clinical study that for those patient who had a brain aneurysm secured (treated) with the coil embolization, it turns out if you continue to smoke, there is 4 times higher risk to have brain aneurysm recurrence compared to those patients who had stopped the cigarette smoking.