Management of ureteric stone in the main referral hospital in Palestine: a retrospective descriptive study

Renal stones disease is one of the most prevalent diseases encountered in the practice of urology. This study described how patients with ureteric stones are managed in the main re-ferral hospital in Palestine. Another aim was to investigate associations between sociodemo-graphic and clinical variables of the patients with the interventions and medications pre-scribed to manage patients with ureteric stones. Medical and surgical records of patients ad-mitted to the hospital for ureteric stones were reviewed, and relevant data were extracted us-ing a data collection form created for this study. The data extraction form collected the pa-tient's age, gender, comorbidities, interventional procedures, and main laboratory findings like serum creatinine and blood urea nitrogen levels. The final analysis included the complete medical and surgical records of 143 patients in this study. The median age of the patients in-cluded was 43.0 [29.0, 55.0] years, the median blood urea nitrogen was 13.8 [10.6, 17.3] mg/dL, and the median serum creatinine was 0.96 [0.75, 1.25] mg/dL. Most patients (79.0%) had a double J stent, and 33 (23.1%) had laser lithotripsy. More than half of the patients (60.8%) received ciprofloxacin. Age had significant and positive moderate correlation with blood urea nitrogen (Spearman’s rho = 0.37, p-value < 0.001) and serum creatinine (Spear-man’s rho = 0.28, p-value = 0.002) levels. Younger age was associated with placement of double J stents patients (Chi-square = 5.1, p-value = 0.039). Placement of double J stent was associated with reporting right or left flanking pain (Chi-square = 16.0, p-value = 0.001). Pre-scription of ciprofloxacin was associated with prescription of diclofenac sodium (Chi-square = 28.3, p-value < 0.001). In conclusion, patients with ureteric stones were adequately man-aged using different techniques in a large Palestinian referral hospital. Future studies are still needed to describe how patients with other renal stones are managed in Palestinian urology practice.