Kidney stone breakthrough procedure at UW called 'game changer' for patients

SEATTLE — A groundbreaking medical procedure for those with kidney stones will soon be offered at the University of Washington after more than two decades of research. It will also give astronauts the go ahead they need from NASA to travel to Mars.

It's a groundbreaking procedure to get rid of painful stones while you're awake, no anesthesia needed.

"This has the potential to be game changing," said Dr. Kennedy Hall with UW Medicine.

Still being run through clinical trials at UW Medicine, the procedure called burst wave lithotripsy uses an ultrasound wand and soundwaves to break apart the kidney stone.

Ultrasonic propulsion is then used to move the stone fragments out, potentially giving patients relief in 10 minutes or less.

"It would really kind of revolutionize the treatment of kidney stones in the sense that you could come to the clinic and have a stone treated before its a problem," said Dr. Jonathan Harper with UW Medicine.

Seattle resident Mark Mackenzie will tell you first hand, the treatment works. He got a chance to take part in the clinical trial just days before he was to be operated on.

"Nothing else in your life matters when you're experiencing kidney stone pain. I wrote an email to the folks that had done the treatment and just thanked them from the bottom of my heart for saving me from that ordeal," Mackenzie said. "It's not a cure-all for everybody, but in some cases, as in mine, it can be, almost what amounts to a miracle cure."

Dr. Kennedy Hall, an emergency medicine doctor at Harborview Medical Center, said this will also change how future patients are treated in the emergency room, who show up, having no idea they have a kidney stone.

"There are a lot of patients with kidney stones, over a million visits a year to emergency departments," said Hall. "Many of them would have stones that we could intervene on at that point of care in the emergency department, so it's potentially groundbreaking."

This technology is also making it possible for astronauts to travel to Mars, since astronauts are at a greater risk for developing kidney stones during space travel.

It's so important to NASA, the space agency has been funding the research for the last 10 years.

"They could potentially use this technology while there, to help break a stone or push it to where they could help stay on their mission and not have to come back to land," said Harper.

Right now this technology is only available through clinical trials, but according to UW Medicine, it may be available to be used on patients in a regular office setting within the next year or so.