Two familiar methods to get rid kidney stones of are surgery and shockwave treatments, those method are effective and safe, although none of them are clearly state as a better method then the other. Researchers report in a new systematic review of studies, the review appears in the current issue of The Cochrane Library, a publication of The Cochrane Collaboration, an international organization that evaluates medical research.
Systematic reviews take an evidence based on conclusions an result about medical practice after considering and comparing both the content and quality of existing medical trials on a topic. The reviewers take 6 trials, involving 833 adults, and compared two minimally invasive kidney stones therapy : ureteroscopy and extra corporeal shockwave lithotripsy. In ureteroscopy, a surgeon passes a thin viewing instrument into the ducts that carry urine from the kidney. Once a kidney stones is found and located the urologist typically removes the crystalline mass with forceps or a “basket” instrument.
The other kidney stones treatment, extra corporeal shock wave lithotripsy, uses sound waves to break each kidney stones into small pieces. The kidney stones pieces later travel through the urinary tract and pass painlessly from the body. The reviewed trials compared several different health outcomes : whether or not the patient was free of kidney stones, the need for additional treatment, therapy complications and length of hospitalisation.
Final results gathered three or four months after treatment suggest that surgery outperformed sound wave therapy to completely clear kidney stones. Overall the review concludes that people treated with ureteroscopy achieve a higher stone-free rate, but have a longer hospital stay and more complications, although most problems were minor.
Choice of intervention really depends on the size and location of the stone,” said Glenn Preminger, M.D., director of the Comprehensive Kidney Stone Centre at Duke University Medical Center. Preminger did not participate in the Cochrane review, but serves on an international panel of experts “reviewing all research in the field to create new guidelines”.
Compile and re-written based on an article by Max-Health.com