Giant bladder lithiasis: case report and bibliographic review

Abstract

Objective: Urinary lithiasis is a very frequent urological disease but bladder lithiasis is very uncommon.Patients usually refer voiding symptoms and hematuria. The diagnosis is made after imaging tests. We report a clinical case describing a giant bladder stone and perform a bibliographic review.

Methods: A 43 year old man with the diagnosis of giant bladder stone (more than 10 cm diameter). We searched Medline using the terms: giant bladder stone, giant bladder lithiasis, bladder lithiasis, giant bladder lithiasis.

Results: We made the diagnosis of giant bladder stone after a simple kidney, ureter and bladder (KUB) X Ray. The treatment for this patient was a cystolithotomy. We found more than 230 reports at Medline and chose the most referred ones and the last 10 years reports.

Conclusions: Giant bladder lithiasis is a very rare pathology. The gold standard for diagnosis is cystoscopy but sometimes with a KUB Xray or an ultrasound is enough. Because of its size, cistolitotomy is the correct treatment for giant bladder stone.