Kidney Stone Symptoms
What is a kidney stone?
Kidney stone is hard stone and crystalline material formed in the kidney or in urinary tract. Kidney stone is a general cause of blood in the urine and causes pains in abdomen, flank or in groin. Kidney stones are also called as renal calculi.
Using the ultrasound scanning, most of the renal stones that is kidney stones can be diagnosed easily without any symptoms. Now day's renal stone is major health problem. Creation of the stones in the urinary tract is called as urolithiasis and in kidney is known as nephrolithiasis. It hits at any time without any warning and worse pains occurs than the labour pain.
Occurrence of renal stones in men is more than women. The ratio of male-to-female is 3:1. It mostly occurs in 30-50 years of the age.
Classification of Kidney Stones:
- Primary stones - These are stones which are created through the tendencies. Secondary stones are caused because of infection of viruses. The stones created because of deficiency of vitamin A also come under this category.
- Calcium stones - Calcium stones combined with the substances such as phosphate, oxalate, or the carbonate for forming the stone. This stone is very hard with rough surface. These are dark in color and generally arise in acid urine.
- Oxalate stones - The toxicity of oxalate in human results from the extreme insolubility of its calcium salt or calcium oxalate, which may precipitate in the renal parenchyma or renal tract, causing either nephrocalcinosis or stones. Diseases of the small intestine increase the tendency to form calcium oxalate stones. These stones are dark brown in colour.
- Uric acid stones - It is the second most common type of stone. Uric acid stones occur because of too much uric acid in the urine. These stones occur because of dehydration after exercise or during the illness. Uric acid stones are occurred in those people who are suffering from the disease that causes higher uric acid level in the blood.
- Phosphates stones - These are the stones which are smooth and chalky and having the tendency to easily break. Its color is dirty white. It is commonly occurred in alkaline urine which is positive for infection.
- Cystine stones - Crystine stones are rarely occurred in the children due to inheritance. Urine becomes saturated with the cystine causes the crystal deposition. These stones are yellow or pink in color and are soft stones.
- Xanthine stones - These are rarely occurred and also because of generic condition. Xanthine is generally transformed into uric acid. It is round, smooth, brick orange/red deposits in urine of children.
Causes of Kidney Stones:
Kidney stone symptoms forms when urine volume gets decreases and stone forming substances present in urine get increases. Very common kidney stone contains calcium in combination with either phosphate or oxalate. The chemical substances which form the stones are amino acid cystine and uric acid.
Chances of occurring kidney stones in men are more and white gets affected more than the blacks. The occurrence of kidney stone symptoms started to rise when men reach to 40 years of their age, rises continually up to the 70 years of the age. People those had already more than one kidney stone are develop more kidney stones. Family history about the kidney stone is risky for developing the kidney stones symptoms.
Following are different conditions which lead to cause the kidney stone:
- Gout: This causes increased amount of uric acid present in the urine and divert to the creation of stones of uric acid.
- Hypercalciuria means high calcium in the urine. This is another inherited condition which causes the stones in half of the cases. Too much calcium is absorbed from the food and exerted into the urine. So their form the calcium oxalate or calcium phosphate stones.
- Other conditions connected with increased risk of kidney stones containing hyperparathyroidism, diseases of kidney such as renal tubular acidosis, and conditions of inherited metabolic including hyperoxaluria and cystinuria. High blood pressure and diabetes also responsible for formation of kidney stones.
- People with inflammatory bowel disease: People who had ostomy surgery or intestinal bypass also cause kidney stones.
- Some medications also raise the risk of kidney stones. These medications include some diuretics, calcium-containing antacids, and the protease inhibitor Crixivan (indinavir), a drug used to treat HIV infection.
Kidney Stone Symptoms:
When the tubular structure is getting blocked, pains are generated in waves and body tries to unblock the barrier. These pain waves are called as colic.
- Renal colic which is related to the kidney has a typical appearance when the kidney stone is passed.
- The pain is powerful and comes on rapidly.
- It is usually placed in the side or the flank of the mid back and emits to the groin. Those who gets affected can not find suitable position and many twist in the pain.
- This is opposite to the non colicky type of pain, like pancreatitis or appendicitis, in which pains are increased after the movement and affected person hold very silent.
- Sweating, vomiting and nausea are very common.
- Blood found in the urine because ureter forced the stones. Occurrence of blood in urine does not for all the time means that person suffering from kidney stone. For the blood there are some other reasons such as trauma, bladder infection or the tumors. Microscope and urinalysis identified the blood in urine even if it is not shown by necked eyes.
Treatment for kidney stones:
Most of the kidney stones ultimately pass to the urinary tract by their own within the two days (48 hours), by taking lot of fluid intake. Medications for the pain relief are prescribed for the kidney stone symptoms. There are various factors responsible for passing the stone. These contain previous stone passage, the size of the person, prostate enlargement, size of the stone and the pregnancy. A stone is of size 4 mm has 80 percent chances of passage and a 5 mm stone has chances of 20 percent. The stones having the 9mm to 10m are rarely passed on their own. Mostly they have to need treatment for removing.
For increasing the passage rates of kidney stones, some medications are very useful. These medications include calcium channel blockers like nifedipine and alpha blockers like tamulosin. These are the drugs given to those people whose kidney stones do not quickly pass throughout the urinary tract.
The procedure named as lithotripsy is used fro the kidney stones that do not pass their own. Shock waves are used in this procedure which breaks down large stones in to small pieces which can then pass through urinary system.
For removing the kidney stones, surgical techniques may also used. This can be done by doing small cut in the skin or using an instrument known as ureteroscope which passed from urethra and bladder into the ureter.
See more on Kidney Stones :
