Is it possible to remove kidney stones without making ANY scar, cut, opening, hole in the body?
YES!!
RIRS( Retrograde Intra Renal Surgery) is a technique by which stones can be removed by a flexible endoscope passed through urine passage and dusting the stone with laser and removing fragments with a small basket.
Advantages:
- Painless
- No scars: quick recovery.
- No blood loss: quick recovery
- Safe: in pregnancy( if needed); people on blood thinners, people with bleeding tendency, elderly, morbidly obese
- Possible in previously failed other methods of surgery or when other modes not possible.
No one likes to undergo a surgery for kidney stones and we all wait and hope for them to pass spontaneously with various means like medicines, water, citrus, alternate medicines, beer etc. That’s human!
But there are situations when one should not wait long and get the stone removed because waiting too long can be disastrous! A blocked kidney by a stone starts getting some degree of irreversible damage as early as one month of blockage.
- YOU HAVE ONLY ONE KIDNEY: by birth, due to a previously removed kidney or after a kidney transplant. If the only functioning kidney is blocked by a stone in the kidney or ureter(tube of kidney draining urine into the bladder), then waiting too long can mean kidney failure.
- BOTH KIDNEYS BLOCKED BY STONES: Toxins start getting accumulating in the blood stream causing uremia.
- A FEVER WITH CHILLS: the pent up urine in the blocked kidney gets infected and leads to urine infection and sepsis. Blockage should be removed at the earliest. Sepsis can be life threatening!
- AN ALREADY COMPROMISED KIDNEY: if your kidneys are already weak because of pre-existing disease like diabetes or blood pressure, then a further insult by a blocked kidney may mean need for a dialysis.
- FAILURE OF WATCHFUL WAITING, MEDICINES,ALTERNATIVE THERAPY: if you have already tried these strategies and stone has not passed in one month, then it’s not a good idea to wait longer because some degree of kidney damage due to death of kidney cells(nephrons) starts happening.
Meet your urologist at the earliest!
