Paediatric Urolithiasis an Emerging Concern: Single Centre Experience in a Non-Endemic Region in South India

Introduction Paediatric urolithiasis is an emerging disease in developing nations especially in India, but a rarer entity compared to its adult counterpart. There is significant geographic variation in the incidence of urolithiasis within India itself. Given the changing dynamics of the disease, this study evaluated paediatric urolithiasis patients in a non-endemic region in South India. Methods This is a retrospective study of children and adolescents diagnosed with urolithiasis from January 2009 to December 2019 in a single tertiary care centre in South India. The purpose of this study was to investigate and identify the demographic and clinical characteristics, aetiology, management, clearance rates after surgical intervention and disease recurrence of paediatric stone disease in a non-endemic region in South India. Results We evaluated 29 patients which included a total of 97 hospital admissions. Predominantly the study population consisted of males (80.0%), with a mean age of symptom onset of 9.44±5.53-years. All patients were metabolically evaluated, 16 patients (55.2%) had metabolic abnormalities and the most common abnormality was hypocitraturia (37.5%). Spontaneous elimination rate was 6.9% and clearance rates for surgical procedures ranged from 72% to 100%. Recurrent stones were seen in 37.9%. No patient developed chronic kidney disease or mortality due to stone disease within the evaluation period of this study. Conclusion Paediatric urolithiasis is an emerging disease in India. There is a high prevalence of metabolic abnormalities in paediatric stone disease which supports the need for metabolic evaluation in all cases. There is more similarity of our study with western literature than the available Indian data which may be due to the lifestyle changes, significant geographic variation within India itself between endemic and non-endemic regions or changing epidemiology of paediatric stone disease per se.