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Click Here 40 °F Forecast | Road Cams Friday, February 6, 2004 Today's News | Classifieds | Autos | Homes | Jobs | Tempo | Health | Community | Home Delivery SECTIONS Home Page Local News Sports Business Obituaries Life Opinion - Politics AP News Weather Classified Archives Site Map EXTRA Newspaper in Education Personals Movie Times TV Times E The People CLASSIFIEDS Find a Car Find a Home Find a Job Find a Rental Place an ad eSouthernOregon Automotive Communities Entertainment Publications Recreation Calendar CUSTOMER SERVICE Frequent Questions Advertising Information Home Delivery Employment Contact Us Media Kit Network Affiliate Email Story to a Friend February 1, 2004 Providence Medford Medical Center radiologic technician John Storment demonstrates the lithotripter, which uses shock waves to blast kidney stones. Mail Tribune / Roy Musitelli Stepping up the fight against kidney stones A machine new to Providence Medical Center uses sound waves to prevent suffering from this painful ailment By BILL KETTLER Mail Tribune Consider a sharp-edged pebble, pushed by a stream of fluid through a tube of smooth flesh. The pain has been known to make men weep. Some women say it’s worse than giving birth. Rogue Valley residents should have fewer moments of agony associated with kidney stones now that physicians have installed a machine to dissolve the stones at Providence Medford Medical Center. Medford’s five urologists have purchased a lithotripter — a machine that uses sound waves to dissolve kidney stones — and placed it in an operating room at Providence. The technology isn’t new. Kidney stones have been dissolved with sound waves since the 1980s, but having a lithotripter in Medford full time will bring patients quicker relief for a condition that produces the worst pain most people will ever know. Advertisement "Women who have had a baby and passed a stone a few days later say the stone is worse," said Dr. Eric Martin, one of the urologists who bought the machine. Lithotripsy was developed in Germany in the mid-1980s, but the equipment was too expensive for small rural hospitals. A mobile treatment unit in a truck brought relief to Jackson County residents with kidney stones, but they had to wait for the truck to make one of its rare visits. With the new equipment, patients typically can have a stone dissolved within a day or two, and emergency cases can get treatment within hours if staff is available, Martin said. "As urologists we really wanted to treat all our patients expeditiously." The machine uses X-rays and CAT scans to precisely locate the stone inside the kidney. Shock waves are produced by passing an electric current through deionized water and focusing the shock waves on the stone. "I tell my patients to visualize a wave cresting," said Dr. Tim Driver, one of the urologists who bought the machine. "You want all the energy of that wave cresting right where the stone is." The shock waves pulverize the stone into fine particles that can be passed painlessly in the urine. Patients are anesthetized to prevent them from moving while their stone is battered with as many as 2,400 shock waves. "They can’t be moving at all," said John Storment, who operates the lithotripter under a physician’s supervision. "You want to deliver all that energy to the exact same area," Driver said. The procedure usually takes about 45 minutes to an hour. Most patients feel no pain afterward — at least not at first. "The second day you feel like somebody took you back in the alley," said Lew Devlin, an Eagle Point man who had a stone dissolved. Like others who have suffered from stones, Devlin said the discomfort afterward is preferable to the pain of passing a stone, or the long recovery period after stones are removed surgically. "I’ve probably passed 40 or 50 stones," Devlin said. "This machine is awesome." Unfortunately, surgery is still necessary for some patients. Martin said about 85 percent of all kidney stones can be treated with shock waves, but stones larger than 5 millimeters (.2 inches) may need to be removed surgically. The physicians initially put the lithotripter at Oregon Surgical Specialists, an outpatient surgery clinic, but decided to move it when they learned that the federal government would not reimburse them for lithotripsy on Medicare and Medicaid patients that was not performed inside a hospital. Putting the lithotripter in the hospital "gives us the ability to treat everyone equally," Martin said. Martin said the doctors invested about $500,000 in the machine and offered it to both Rogue Valley Medical Center and Providence. Providence agreed to dedicate space for it in the surgery center. "RVMC just had too much on their plate right now," Martin said, noting that RVMC is in the middle of a three-year, $92 million expansion and remodeling. "Providence has the capacity (to handle the machine) right now." Andrea Jablonski, a spokesperson for RVMC, said the physicians’ decision to place the lithotripter at Providence means that Providence will be the site for all lithotripsy in Medford. Reach reporter Bill Kettler at 776-4492, or e-mail [email protected] Most common cause of stones is dehydration Nobody knows what causes kidney stones, but they affect 2 to 3 percent of Americans. "Some people have elevated calcium levels," said Dr. Eric Martin, a Medford urologist. "The most common cause is dehydration. "At the end of summer we typically get a wave of people with stones. People who don’t stay hydrated tend to get (kidney stones) in the fall." Martin said kidney-stone disease is much more common in men. For every woman troubled with stones, there are about three men. A white male has a 1-in-8 chance of developing at least one kidney stone by the age of 70, and one stone often means more will appear. Someone who has a stone has a 10 percent chance of having another one within a year; a 35 percent chance of having another stone within five years; and a 50 percent chance within 10 years. Kidney-stone disease may also have a genetic component. Martin said 25 percent of people who have kidney stones have someone in their family who also had stones. Mail Tribune Home Local News | Sports | Business | Obituaries | Life Opinion - Politics | AP News | Archives | Site Map E Southern Oregon | Classified Copyright © 1997-2004 Mail Tribune. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy | Terms & Conditions Website Feedback 3 WEEKS FREE! 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