Kidney Stones Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Kidney Stones, including details on causes, symptoms, treatment, diagnosis of nephrolithiasis, calculi.

Risk factors for urinary stone formation in men with spinal cord injury: a 17-year follow-up study.

Ku JH, Jung TY, Lee JK, Park WH, Shim HB

Department of Urology, Seoul Veterans Hospital, 6-2 Doonchon-2-dong, Kangdong-gu, Seoul 134-791, Korea.

OBJECTIVE: To establish hazard ratios for risk of urinary stone formation in men with chronic spinal cord injury. PATIENTS AND METHODS: In all, 140 men injured before 1987 were eligible for this investigation and were followed yearly from January 1987 and December 2003. RESULTS: Over the 17 years, 39 patients (28%) and 21 (15%) were diagnosed with bladder and renal stones for a total of 59 and 25 episodes, respectively. In multivariate analysis, bladder stone was more common in patients injured when aged > or = 24 years than in those injured when aged <24 years (odds ratio 2.5; 95% confidence interval 1.1-5.7; P = 0.03). In another model, patients with complete injury had a greater risk of renal stone formation than those with incomplete injury (4.1, 1.3-12.9; P = 0.016). Renal stone was more common for patients with urethral catheterization than for those voiding spontaneously (5.7, 1.3-24.6, P = 0.021) and for patients with bladder stone than for those without (4.7, 1.5-15.1; P = 0.01). CONCLUSION: Injury characteristics are important for the development of urinary stone in chronic traumatic spinal cord injury. In addition, the present findings suggest that in men who cannot use intermittent catheterization or when the bladder cannot empty spontaneously, suprapubic cystostomy is better than urethral catheterization to avoid renal stone formation.

Published 15 March 2006 in BJU Int, 97(4): 790-3.
Full-text of this article is available online (may require subscription).

© 2004-2008 Kidney Stones Research Today. All Rights Reserved.