Open Stone Surgery: Is It Justified In The Era Of Minimally Invasive Therapies?

Objectives To analyze retrospectively the cases suffered from upper urinary tract calculi treated by open stone surgery in urological department of West China Hospital of Sichuan University from January 1995 through December 2004, and in combination with the follow-ups of these cases to investigate the current indications of open stone surgery and summarize the efficacy of this treatment modality.Patients and methods A 10-year retrospective review (1995.1-2004.12) was conducted of all cases with renal and ureteral calculi treated by open stone surgery and the follow-up of all cases was also investigated with two detailed tables through letters and/or telephones.Results (1) In all, there were 759 patients treated for renal and ureteral calculi by open stone surgery .There were 468 men and 291 women ranging in age from 2 to 78 years (mean age 44.2 ± 13.5 years) . There were 529 patients with renal calculi in operation side; 83 patients with renal and ipsilateral ureteral calculi in operation side ; 147 patients with ureteral calculi in operation side .There were 142 patients with renal and/or ureteral calculi in other side at the same time . Of all the cases, if calculated by the greatest dimension of the calculi ,there were 268 patients with renal calculi that the...