Urinary lithiasis disease is a disease of industrialized countries. The more we eat badly, the more we do calculations. It is therefore a disease of civilization. You should never neglect a stone, because it can be painful, enlarge, but worse still, damage or destroy the kidney. Kidney stones were the number one cause of kidney destruction at the turn of the century. It is therefore not necessary to let it grow, but to treat it, even if we don’t suffer from it.

The treatment of the crisis is medical treatment with anti-inflammatory drugs and analgesics. Some situations are urgent and you must react very quickly if you are in this situation. Otherwise, you risk damaging your kidneys or finding yourself in a very serious situation that could jeopardize your life …

Here is the list of emergencies requiring urgent medical and surgical management:

• Hyperalgesic renal colic (very painful) that does not respond to oral treatment.
• Fever,
• Urinary tract infection,
• The pregnancy,
• The single kidney.

The management of stones by flexible ureteroscopy by combining the laser has been a revolution. We can even perform flexible ureteroscopies with laser several times on the same stone to destroy and evacuate it. We no longer open the kidneys by surgery as in the past. This type of surgery has almost disappeared in countries with access to modern techniques that better preserve the kidneys and their functioning.

D^r Marc Galiano, urological surgeon.