Endourology and StonesIn Vitro Comparisons of Retropulsion and Fragmentation Efficacy of 2 Cordless, Handheld Pneumatic and Electromechanical Lithotripsy Devices
Section snippets
Materials and Methods
The used devices and their probes are shown in the Supplementary Figure 1A,B.
Results
The technical characters of both devices are listed in Table 1.
Comment
Despite recent advances in instruments (eg flexible endoscopes), stone fragmentation devices (eg laser technology), and stone retrieval devices, the stone-free rate remains a constant challenge after minimally invasive stone surgeries especially for upper tract calculi. A success rate of 91% was reported.13, 14, 15, 16 As mentioned before, up to 50% of patients with residual stone fragments after endoscopic stone removal (ureteroscopy or percutaneous nephrolithotomy) develop stone-related
Conclusion
The mechanic impact EMS LithoBreaker and the pneumatic Cook LMA StoneBreaker are comparably effective in stone disintegration. Both produced comparable amounts of retropulsion. The amount of single shots for fragmentation of stone phantoms was significantly higher for the LithoBreaker compared with the StoneBreaker irrespective of the probe size and probe guide used. Fragmentation characteristics of mechanic impact lithotripters improve with the hardness of the probe guide used.
Acknowledgment
The authors thank EMS company for their support and supplying the equipment for the current examinations. They also thank Mr. Wolfgang Merkle for his technical support.
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Cited by (0)
Wael Y Khoder and Markus J Bader shared senior authorship.
Financial Disclosure: M.J.B. and N.H. were partially sponsored by Electric Medical Systems as speakers in international congress. The remaining authors declare that they have no relevant financial interests.