SURGICAL MANAGEMENT OF URINARY TRACT STONES IN CHILDREN:EXPERIENCE FROM TIKURANBESSA HOSPITAL, ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA

Introduction: Urinary stone disease is a disorder with significant impact on quality of life. Moreover, children have a higher recurrence rate owing to associated metabolic and anatomic abnormalities. Management has changed with technological advances. Despite the current trend, open stone surgery is still widely practiced in developing countries. However, there have been no reports regarding treatment of  this disease in children from Ethiopia so far. We aimed to determine the mode of management and outcomes of the different approches for childhood urolithiasis  which practiced in our institution.  We also tried to assess factors leading to adverse outcomes. Methods: This is a retrospective descriptive study of pediatric patients who underwent surgical procedures for urolithias from September 2010 to August 2015. Medical records were reviewed for factors thought to affect outcome of management.   Results: We investigated 50 children aged 0-15 years and the mean age for operation was 8.5 ± 3.2 years. The stones were found exclusively in upper urinary tract in 56%, lower urinary tract in 30% and a combination of sites in 14%. All lower urinary tract stones were managed with open surgery, of which cystolithotomy comprised 81%. Common procedures performed for upper urinary tract stones were open stone surgery (41 %) and ureteroscopic intervention in (34.5%). Success rate with ureteroscopy was 30%. Post-operative complications occurred in 24%; common ones being urinary tract infection (10%) and urinary leak (10%). The factors with significant correlation to post-operative complications were history of urinary tract infection and chronic kidney disease (p=0.02 and p=0.047 respectively). Recurrence occurred in 12%. Thirty percent of the children required a second surgical procedure. Conclusion: The practice in our institution is still evolving towards the standard approaches of stone treatment. Metabolic evaluation is lacking, post-operative complications are high and our experience with pediatric ureteroscopy was not satisfactory. Most of these issues were associated with our socioeconomic status, as facility was not adequately equipped and patients presented late with renal failure.  Keywords: Pediatric urolithiasis, Stone disease in Ethiopia