Renal colic, symptoms before violent back pain and therapies

Anyone who has experienced it knows how insidious renal colic can be: the pain is in fact excruciating and difficult to tolerate. It is caused by kidney stones, an increasingly widespread condition. Renal colic, although characterized by pain of varying intensity, is it is often described by patients as the worst pain they have ever experienced – explains Joseph Castellano, director of the Nephrology, dialysis and kidney transplants Unit of the Irccs Policlinico Foundation of Milan and associate professor at the University of Milan —. Typically the episode of stones occurs with a slight pain in the lumbar areawith abdominal irradiation followed by rapid onset of acute pain which can extend to the groin and genital area.

This sudden manifestation caused by the migration of the calculus, previously confined to the kidney, within the ureter, determining its partial or complete obstruction. The pain, stabbing and intermittentoften cyclically it lasts from 20 to 60 minutes, but also hours without giving a break even by changing position. In general, renal colic is a temporary situation that resolves when the stone, reaching the bladder, is expelled in the urine. The event may be accompanied by numerous other symptoms, including nausea, vomiting, profuse sweating, and palpitations. The additional presence of chills, fever, burning or pain when you urinate, cloudy urine and foul smelling, should suggest a superimposed urinary tract infectionrequiring blood and urine tests to confirm this. Sometimes it can also be observed presence of blood in the urine because the passage of the calculus along the ureter can induce a lesion of its wall.