Removal of Kidney Stones with Percutaneous Nephrolithotomy or Nephrolithotripsy
Urologists are faced with removing a large variety of kidney stones. In many cases, these salt and mineral deposits harmlessly pass through the urinary tract and out of the body with no discernible symptoms. Because each patient is different, medical science has devised manifold treatment options for these deposits that may turn in to actual stones. In addition to shock wave therapy, other surgical treatments do exist. One such procedure is known as percutaneous nephrolithotomy or simply nephrolithotripsy.
In these types of procedures, the surgeon makes a small incision on the patient’s back to remove the kidney stones. A hollow tube is then inserted into the renal organ so a probe can pass through the tube. The surgeon is now in a position to break up the stones into smaller pieces and removes those fragments through the tube.
Medical science also recognizes that not all procedures will be appropriate for every patient. Therefore, the nephrolithotripsy procedure is best used on renal stones that present in the following ways:
- Mineral deposits that grows to larger than two centimeters in diameter.
- A condition known as staghorn calculi in which stones are rather large and caused by an infection.
- Debris that blocks the flow of urine.
- Stones that do not respond to extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy (ESWL).
The success rate of percutaneous nephrolithotomy is quite high and the procedure successfully removes stones in the kidney approximately ninety-five percent of the time and successfully removes stones in the ureter about eighty-eight percent of the time.Mineral deposits that form into stones can also present complications, particularly if the stones move from the kidney into the ureter, a small tube that carried urine from the body. During a stone removal procedure, a stone that has lodged itself into the ureter will need to be pushed back into the kidney with a small tool called an ureteroscope; before the surgeon can break it up into smaller fragments.
These types of corrective procedures are used far more frequently than alternative procedures such as extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy (ESWL) to remove larger stones, such as staghorn calculi. In these specific cases, every piece of a staghorn calculus must be removed to prevent the stone from actually re-growing and causing further problems.