Tamsulosin Improves Post-SWL Outcomes

ORLANDO - Tamsulosin given after shock wave lithotripsy (SWL) for upper urinary tract stones improves outcomes, according to findings presented by researchers from Egypt at the American Urological Association 2014 annual meeting.

Khaled Mursi Hammoud, MD, and colleagues at Cairo University prospectively enrolled 96 male patients with solitary radio-opaque urinary tract stones with a maximum diameter of 20 mm or less. All underwent SWL. After the treatment, all patients were instructed to drink lots of fluids and were randomly divided into 2 groups. Group 1 included 47 patients who received tamsulosin 0.4 mg once daily plus analgesics as needed; group 2 included 49 patients received only analgesics as needed. The mean stone size was 13.0 and 12.3 mm for groups 1 and 2, respectively.

The proportion of patients with expulsed stones was 80.0% (28 patients) in group 1 compared with 48.5% (16 patients) in group 2, a statistically significant difference between the groups. The expulsion rates for stones 5-10 mm were 82.4% (14 of 17 patients) for group 1 versus 65% (13 of 20 patients) for group 2. The rates for stones 11-20 mm were 80.0% (24 of 30 patients) for group 1 versus 51.7% (15 of 29 patients) in group 2. All of the between-group differences were statistically significant.

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