Clinical characteristics of adult cases with urolithiasis from Trkiye: A regional epidemiological study

Objective: To evaluate the metabolic and clinical characteristics of adult cases with stone disease from a regional part of Turkiye. Methods: The study included 2348 adult patients with sonography and/or computed tomography-proven urinary stones. All cases were given a questionnaire about the epidemiological features of urolithiasis. Aside from the type and severity of stone-forming risk factors, both patient (age, gender, BMI, associated comorbidities, first onset of stone disease, positive family history, educational level) and stone-related (size, number, location, chemical composition, previous stone attacks) factors have been thoroughly assessed. The data were evaluated in multiple aspects to outline the epidemiological features. Results: The overall mean age value of the cases was 43.3 years, and the M/F ratio was 1.34. The first onset of the disease was found to vary between 15-57 years, with a mean value of 32.4 years. While most of the stones were located in kidney and ureter, calcium -containing stones constituted the most common type (CaOx 69%, CaOxPO(4) 7%). More than 42% of the cases suffered from multiple stone attacks; positive family history waspresent in 31.6%. Among the associated comorbidities, hypertension was the most common pathology (45.8%), and the BMI index value was > 30 in 31.3% of the cases. 57.7% of the patients had just one stone attack, and 42.2% had recurrent stone formation. Conclusions: Our findings clearly show that important implications may be extracted from epidemiologic data acquired from local scale research to implement an effective preventative program and closely monitor the patients.