Kidney stones are a common and painful condition, with many sufferers experiencing recurrent episodes.
Kidney stones are a common and painful condition, with many sufferers experiencing recurrent episodes. Most people who pass an initial stone want to know their chances of future episodes, but this has not always been easy to predict. Now Mayo Clinic researchers are tracking the familiar characteristics of kidney stone formers in an online prediction tool that could help sufferers anticipate if they'll experience future episodes. The study was published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings.
Using data obtained from the Rochester Epidemiology Project, a team of researchers explored a sampling of chronic kidney stone formers from Olmsted County between 1984 and 2017. Common features of patients who had recurrent stone events included younger age, male sex, a higher body mass index, history of pregnancy, and a family history of stones. Researchers also noted that stone recurrence tended to increase after each subsequent event, and the size and location of stones also associated with the risk of future episodes.
By using these features to develop a Recurrence of Kidney Stone online prediction tool, researchers were able to improve upon known criteria for future stone formation. By entering information such as gender, race and an individual's kidney stone history, the tool can generate an estimate of recurrence. “Each of the risk factors we identified are entered into the model, which then calculates an estimate of the risk of h0aving another kidney stone in the next five or 10 years,” explains John Lieske, M.D., one of the study researchers.
Read more at Mayo Clinic
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