Abstract
Kidney stones are a major public health concern with continuously increasing worldwide prevalence. Shock wave lithotripsy (SWL) is the first line treatment choice for upper urinary tract calculi with ureteroscopy and has advantages of safety and noninvasiveness, but the treatment success rate of SWL is lower than that of other therapies. It is therefore important to identify predictive factors for SWL outcome and select a suitable treatment choice for patients with upper urinary tract calculi. In recent years, computed tomography (CT) has become the gold standard for diagnosis of upper urinary tract calculi. Several factors based on CT images, including skin-to-stone distance, mean stone density, stone heterogeneity index, and variation coefficient of stone density, have been reported to be useful for predicting SWL outcome. In addition, a new method of analysis, CT texture analysis, is reportedly useful for predicting SWL outcomes. This review aims to summarize CT parameters for predicting the outcome of shock wave lithotripsy in stone cases in the upper urinary tract.
Highlights
Kidney stones are a major public health concern with continuously increasing prevalence [1]
Noncontrast computed tomography (CT) has become the gold standard for diagnosis of upper urinary tract calculi, and several factors based on CT images have been reported to be useful for prediction of shock wave lithotripsy (SWL) outcome in addition to stone size and location
The results indicate that stone heterogeneity can affect SWL outcome
Summary
Kidney stones are a major public health concern with continuously increasing prevalence [1]. The first line treatment choice for upper urinary tract calculi is currently shock wave lithotripsy (SWL). Noncontrast computed tomography (CT) has become the gold standard for diagnosis of upper urinary tract calculi, and several factors based on CT images have been reported to be useful for prediction of SWL outcome in addition to stone size and location. A magnification error with KUB can lead to an increase in stone size by 20% [9]. Compared with KUB or US, the stone size measurements for CT images have been reported to be more accurate and BioMed Research International. It has been reported that coronal CT images provide a different impression of stone size and should be used to measure stone size more accurately [11]. Future large-scale studies are required to decide the optimal cutoff value for stone volume
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