Over the last 15 years the treatment of ureteral stones has been considerably revolutionised thanks to new, less invasive technologies compared to traditional surgery. The urologist is, however, faced with a dilemma: whether to cure the patient with easy-to-perform extracorporeal lithotripsy (ESWL) without anesthesia in Day Surgery, but which often requires more than one session to clear the stones completely, or to carry out ureteroscopy and intracorporeal lithotripsy, which resolves most cases in just one treatment but is more invasive in that it requires general anesthesia and hospitalisation. The authors present their experience and compare the two methods.
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