Current conventional kidney stone removal procedures are incredibly painful and require sedation.
A new study led by Dr. M. Kennedy Hall, an emergency medicine physician at UW Medicine, introduces an almost imperceptible new technology that can be done while the patient is conscious and without sedation.
A total turnaround. It could allow kidney stones to be removed in virtually any situation, and quickly. The results were presented during a press conference which you can find here.
In Italy there are over 100.000 cases of kidney stones every year. Overseas, however, one in 11 Americans will experience this condition. The numbers are constantly increasing, and in 50% of cases the problems recur within 5 years.
New "sweet" approaches to kidney stones
Hall and colleagues believe that finding new ways to treat kidney stones is crucial. Safe, efficient and painless ways. The team evaluated their new technique to see its potential, especially in treating the problem without resorting to surgery or sedation of the patient.
The Firm
The research saw the participation of 29 patients suffering from this problem: 16 of them were treated with ultrasound. 13 received, in addition to ultrasound, a shock wave lithotripsy treatment.
In 19 patients, the kidney stones moved, and in two cases they even rerouted out through the urethra and bladder.
The shock wave lithotripsy work is surprising, fragmenting the calculations in 7 cases. “Two weeks later,” the researchers note, “18 of the 21 patients (86%) whose stones were located further down the ureter, closer to the bladder, had outgrown the stones. In this group, the average time for the passage of the stones was about four days ".
One patient even reported feeling "immediate relief" when the stone was moved from the ureter, according to the study.
Kidney stones, the next steps
Now the researchers are looking into a clinical trial with a control group, which receives neither normal ultrasound, nor shock wave itrolissia. The target? Establish the exact degree of effectiveness of this new technology that NASA has been funding since 2017.
The space agency was looking to see if kidney stones could be managed without anesthesia on long space flights. The first results were so promising that they convinced even the most skeptical.
"We now have a potential solution to this problem," concluded Hall.
