Every 10th German will form upper urinary tract calculi during live time ad every fourth of them will suffer from a recurrence [1]. It is therefore not surprising that urinary stones account for up to 20% of all urological cases. Therefore, every urologist has to be familiar with urinary stone disease. During the last three decades, interventional stone treatment made an enormous shift from open surgery to today's minimal-invasive procedures. Extracorporal shock wave lithotripsy (SWL) virtually stopped all other techniques only shortly after percutaneous nephrolithotomy (PNL) has been introduced. However, the limitations of SWL such as large stones, hard stone compositions and the lower renal pole became evident over the years. Improvements in endoscopic techniques and skills let to preferential use of ureteroscopy (URS) and, again, percutaneous techniques.
展开▼
