Abstract: Objective To investigate the therapeutic effect of preoperative ureteral stenting on the treatment of renal or upper ureteral calculi with flexible ureteroscopic lithotripsy. Methods From October 2018 to July 2021, 256 patients who had undergone flexible ureteroscopic lithotripsy for renal or upper ureteral calculi in Beijing Haidian Hospital were retrospectively selected. According to whether the patients accepted preoperative ureteral stenting or not, the patients were divided into experimental group (n=192) and control group (n=64), and the experimental group was further divided into long-(14 d, n=64) and short-term (7 d, n=128) group according to the time of preoperative ureteral stenting. The differences in success rate of surgery, operative time, amounts of intraoperative blood loss, length of hospital-stay, incidence of postoperative complications and stone-free rate were analyzed to evaluate the therapeutic effects. Results The operative time and intraoperative blood loss of the control group were significantly higher than that of the experimental group, there was significant difference between the two groups(P＜0.001). The long-term group had longer hospital-stay time (P＜0.001), shorter operative time and less amounts of blood loss (P＜0.001). The success rate of surgery and stone-free rate of the control group were lower than that of the experimental group (P＜0.05), while incidence of postoperative complications was higher than experimental group (P＜0.001). There was no significant difference between the short- and long-term group in the stone-free rate, while the postoperative complications of the short-term group was higher than the experimental group (P＜0.05). Conclusions Preoperative ureteral stenting improves the success rate of surgery operation and the stone-free rate, reduces the postoperative complications and intraoperative blood loss, shorten the operative time.

Key words: kidney calculi, upper ureteral calculi, flexible ureteroscopic lithotripsy, ureteral stenting, therapeutic effect