Urology Journal

Abstract

Purpose: To determine the unfavorable factors, related to lower pole anatomical characteristics (LPACs), influencing the success of retrograde intrarenal surgery (RIRS) for lower pole renal calculi (LPC).

Materials and Methods: We reviewed the data of 36 patients who underwent RIRS for LPC between Octo­ber 2012 and October 2013. The infundibulopelvic angle (IPA), infundibular length (IL) and infundibular width (IW) were measured on preoperative intravenous urographies. On follow-up stone-free status was defined as complete clearance at the first month kidney-ureter-bladder X-ray and computed tomography if necessary.

Results: The median stone size was 10 mm (range, 5-35). The stone-free rates according to LPACs at the first month follow-up were 100% (n = 17), 57.9% (n = 11), 90% (n = 18), 62.5% (n = 10), 90.5% (n = 19) and 60% (n = 9) for patients with IPA ≥ 70°, IPA < 70º, IL < 3 cm, IL ≥ 3 cm, IW ≥ 5 mm and IW < 5 mm, respec­tively. While IPA and IW were associated with success of RIRS for LPC in multivariate analysis (P = .003 and P = .046, respectively), only IW was found to be a significant factor after applying multivariate analysis (P = .05).

Conclusion: The results of our study demonstrated that only IW had a significant effect on the success rate of RIRS for LPC.