Renal Lithiasis: Current Concepts about a Millenary Disease

Renal lithiasis has been a disease afflicting humankind since ancient times; epidemiological data worldwide show that its prevalence varies in different geographical areas, with a higher prevalence in a belt mainly encompassing tropical regions.

Initially, medicine focused on searching for and developing surgical strategies for treating renal lithiasis; currently, the application of minimally invasive surgical procedures predominates. The predominant clinical symptoms are hematuria and acute and intense pain.

Because of its high recurrence rate, research on renal lithiasis has focused on determining its causes and risk factors. Diagnostic methods for pathology have evolved significantly; currently, there are accessible and inexpensive methods (renal and urinary tract ultrasound), as well as more sophisticated methods; however, computed tomography is the gold standard method because it offers high sensitivity and specificity and allows us to pinpoint the location of the stone and suggest its composition. Even so, a percentage of patients are asymptomatic, and the diagnosis is made fortuitously.

New approaches to treating this disease are focused on metabolic studies to improve medical and nutritional therapy, minimally invasive surgical procedures, and the development of new wireless laparoscopic devices to obtain real-time images and biopsies to reduce the recurrence of the pathology.

Keywords: Hounsfield units, Kidney stones, Lithiasis belt, Risk factors, Stone composition.