In addition to causing pain, can kidney stones actually cause permanent damage to your kidney? The unfortunate answer is yes, kidney stones in some cases can actually result in a “dead” kidney or kidney failure. The good news though is that this doesn’t happen very often and it often takes a long time to occur, providing the opportunity for treatment to occur before permanent damage occurs.
Kidney stones can cause kidney damage in two primary ways.
1) An untreated obstructing stone that causes persistent severe blockage instead of successfully passing can eventually cause atrophy in a kidney, resulting in a dilated, thinned out kidney with minimal function.
Thankfully, because most stones are associated with significant amounts of pain, most patients will seek treatment long before permanent damage can occur. However, in cases where patients have “silent” stones that cause little or no pain, long term obstruction can occasionally lead to kidney damage. With no symptoms to warn them, these patients often go months to years before a stone is diagnosed.
The CT scan below demonstrates a left kidney which has been damaged by a large obstructing left ureteral stone. For comparison, note the normal size right kidney. The patient did not have any symptoms of pain and the stone was found after the CT scan was obtained for the finding of blood in the urine.
2) Infection related stones, usually composed of struvite and sometimes presenting as a complete “staghorn” can lead to ongoing chronic urinary tract infections that cause damage slowly through inflammation and scarring of the kidney tissue.
The CT scan below demonstrates an atrophic right kidney due to a large “staghorn” infection stone. This patient also has left kidney stones and presented with recurrent infections and left sided back pain.
How often do kidney stones cause kidney failure?
The most recent data from the United States Renal Data System indicates that “other urologic diseases” (which would include stones) was the cause in 2% of cases of kidney failure in the United States. The two most common causes of kidney failure were diabetes and high blood pressure. In the United States, there was a total of 571,414 Americans with kidney failure in 2009. 116,395 new cases of kidney failure developed during the year. Consistent with this US data, kidney stones were also reported to be the cause of kidney failure in 1 to 3% of all patients undergoing dialysis in two studies from France and Tunisia.
Chronic kidney disease occurs when the kidneys do not work normally. The kidneys’ job in the body is to filter blood, remove waste, and regulate salt and water. If chronic kidney disease is severe enough such that the kidneys stop working completely (>90% of function lost), it is called kidney failure or “end stage renal disease”. In these cases, patients require replacement kidney treatment through dialysis or a kidney transplant.
One reason why kidney stones don’t often cause chronic kidney disease or failure more often is because in most cases, kidney stones will cause damage to only one kidney. Patients whose other kidney is healthy will usually not develop kidney failure. Exceptions to this can occur in cases of kidney stones affecting both kidneys, large infection stones occurring in both kidneys, certain congenital causes of kidney stones, and in patients with only one kidney (40% of patients with kidney failure from kidney stones in the study from France had only one functional kidney).
Stone types causing kidney failure in a study of 45 patients (Paris, France).
|Stone Type||Percentage of cases|
|Congenital (hyperoxaluria type 1and cystinuria)||13.3%|
How can I avoid developing kidney damage from my stones?
The good news is that for the vast majority of kidney stone patients, significant kidney damage is unlikely. To be on the safe side, there are a few steps you can take.
- If you develop a stone episode but do not pass a stone or undergo treatment within a few months, you may want to consider getting followup imaging with your doctor to insure that the stone has actually passed and is not causing persistent obstruction. This is more of a concern for larger stones (greater than 6mm or so).
- Patients with large infection related stones (struvite) are at increased risk for kidney damage from their stones. They should be sure to have their stones treated and need followup to insure infections and stones do not return.
- Work with your doctor to prevent future stones. A prevention plan may include testing for the reason why you are forming stones, diet changes, or in certain cases, medications.
Floege: Comprehensive Clinical Nephrology, 4th ed.
Jungers and colleagues, “ESRD caused by Nephrolithiasis: Prevalence, Mechanisms, and Prevention”. American Journal of Kidney Diseases 2004.
Ounissi and colleagues, “Nephrolithiais-induced end stage renal disease”. International Journal of Nephrology and Renovascular Disease.
U S Renal Data System, USRDS 2011 Annual Data Report: Atlas of Chronic Kidney Disease and End-Stage Renal Disease in the United States, National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, Bethesda, MD, 2011.