CONTEXT Main pancreatic duct stones may contribute to pain in chronic pancreatitis. Extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy (ESWL) has been used alone or in combination with endoscopic therapy for fragmentation of stones. Published studies have shown mixed efficacy due to small sample size. OBJECTIVE Systematic analysis of all published data evaluating ESWL with or without endoscopic therapy in...

INTRODUCTION Determination of stone composition is considered to be crucial for the choice of an optimal treatment algorithm. It is especially important for uric acid stones, which can be dissolved by oral chemolysis and for renal stones smaller than 2 cm, which can be treated with extracorporeal shockwave lithotripsy (ESWL). MATERIAL AND METHODS This short review identifies the latest papers...

January 2003 is still alive in my memory: a medical student during his IFMSA exchange in Egypt wanders the premises of the University Hospital in As-syut. Instead of the research in neural tube defects in newborns he is supposed to do, he spends his days until dusk in various operation theatres watching surgeries – many of them for the first time in his life – and has no idea about his future c...

The use of certain technical principles and the selection of favorable cases can optimize the results of extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy (ESWL). The aim of this study is to review how ESWL works, its indications and contraindications, predictive factors for success, and its complications. A search was conducted on the Pubmed® database between January 1984 and October 2013 using "shock wav...

INTRODUCTION Extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy (ESWL) is accepted as the gold standard treatment for renal stones that are smaller than 2 cm. Recently, retrograde intrarenal surgery (RIRS) has been introduced as another form of treatment. We report our experience in dealing with renal stones smaller than 2 cm using RIRS as the primary treatment and following failed ESWL. METHODS A retrosp...

BACKGROUND This study was carried out to determine whether or not there is a significant relationship between the radiologic anatomy of the lower calyx, as seen on preoperative intravenous urography (IVU), and the outcome of stone clearance after extracorporeal shockwave lithotripsy (ESWL) for lower renal calyceal stones. METHODS Between June 1998 and April 2007, 112 patients with a solitary ...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the efficacy of extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy (ESWL) for distal ureteric calculi (DUC) and to determine variables that could affect the outcome results. PATIENTS AND METHODS Between April 2004 and February 2008, 100 patients with a solitary DUC were treated with in situ ESWL using a lithotripter (Lithostar Plus, Siemens, Erlangen, Germany). The outcome of treatme...

PURPOSE To determine whether the distance from skin to stone, as measured by computed tomography (CT) scans, could affect the stone-free rate achieved via extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy (ESWL) in renal stone patients. MATERIALS AND METHODS We retrospectively reviewed the records 573 patients who had undergone ESWL at our institution between January 2006 and January 2010 for urinary sto...