Chronic urinary tract infection and renal stones.

In patients with bacteriuria and small and otherwise asymptomatic renal stones, the infection should be linked to the stone before surgical removal of the stone is considered. In this study the level of infection was determined by ureteric catheterisation. The method could discriminate between stone-related infections (70%) and infections confined to the lower urinary tract (30%) in virtually all of the patients. Even very small stones (3 mm) were shown to be the cause of decade-long bacteriurias. The results of operative stone removal were encouraging, with eradication of the infection in 87% of the patients with stone-related infection.