Post Ureteral Stent Removal Symptoms

Blanca Morales:

Hello, this is Blanca Morales reporting for Uro Today. I'm here with Dr. Nithin Theckumparampil, and he is from the Smith Institute of Urology. He's going to talk to us about his project on the symptoms after removal of a urethral stent. He's here reporting from the World Congress of Endourology 2013 in New Orleans. Nithin, please tell us a little bit more about your project.

Dr. Nithin T.:

Okay. Hi, Blanca. Thank you for the opportunity. Basically, what we looked into is the symptoms that people have after a stent has been removed. The reason why it's important is because stents have been used for decades right now, and the reason is because they're extremely useful in urology. Everyone who has a stent, or at least most of them, have symptoms while the stent is inside them, in situ, or after removal of the stents.

Limited Research Post Removal

Dr. Nithin T.:

It so happens that most of the research is done on the symptoms while the stent is still inside the ureters. However, there's very little research that looks into the kind of symptoms that they have after it's been removed. The reason why it's important, again, is because it causes a lot of readmission and pain control, and there's a lot of issues that go on with it. The etiology's unclear, however it is self-limiting, so we thought we going to find out the incidence of these symptoms and possibly figure out the predictors of the pain after stent removal.

Phone Survey

We found 137 individuals in our institution who had stents placed and subsequently removed, and then one to three weeks after that, they were evaluated on the phone or by person regarding their symptoms using our questionnaire.

Symptoms Post Uretal Stent Removal  

What we found out was that 64% had symptoms after the stent was removed, and they were mostly:

  • Pain
  • Hematuria

...but they also included:

  • Frequency
  • Urgency
  • Fever

All the symptoms started immediately after the stent was removed, and they lasted for less than a few days.

What we found out was that the predictors in analysis were basket stone extraction procedures and pain during stent removal.

Pilot Project

I guess, if we were to do something about this, we're going to have to ... This is a pilot project, and I think we need to use this data and figure out, how much does basket stone extraction actually affect these patients? And then, mainly, we need to concentrate on the counseling of these patients so that they would expect that they will have more pain with these particular procedures, and so on and so forth.

Blanca Morales:

Great. Definitely a possibility to impact a lot of clinical practices.

Dr. Nithin T.:

Yes. A lot of them. And like I said, a lot of these patients use stents, so it would help a lot of patients. That's right.

Blanca Morales:

Great. Thank you so much for your time.