Abstract

In this study we attempted to evaluate the association of stone burden on the effectiveness and complications of percutaneous nephrolithotomy (PNL) for kidney stones.

One hundred twenty eight patients with kidney stone in whom PNL was performed between 1987- 2000 with a mean age of 42 years (range of 16-77 years) were included. Of these 128 subjects 5 had bilateral and 3 had unilateral recurrent stones. A total of 151 PNL procedures were performed to treat 136 renal units (RU). The patients were stratified according to stone burden as Group I (stones≤2 cm) and Group II (stones>2 cm) in order to evaluate the effect of stone burden on the procedures of PNL.

The mean duration of the operation and hospital stay after procedure was 85.5 minutes (range of 30-300 minutes) and 6.7 days (range of 3-31 days), respectively.

The hospital stay of patients in Group II was longer than those in Group I (p=0.006).

The overall stone free rate was 68% for the whole group, whereas it was significantly lower in Group II than in Group I (60% vs. 97%, p=0.018).

Various complications were encountered in 59 (46%) of the patients during and after procedure and 8 (6%) of those 59 subjects underwent surgical procedures due to these complications. On the other hand patients in Group II experienced more complications than those in Group I (p=0.025).