Pediatric KIDney Stone (PKIDS) Care Improvement Network

Kidney stones are one of the fastest growing health conditions among children, adolescents, and young adults. The rapid increase over a short period of time has resulted in a large number of pediatric patients who require surgery to remove kidney stones with very little information available to guide selection of treatment options.

There are three alternative approaches to remove kidney stones: ureteroscopy (an endoscopic outpatient procedure), shockwave lithotripsy (a noninvasive outpatient procedure), or percutaneous nephrolithotomy (a minimally invasive surgery with a short hospital stay). This study will compare stone clearance (a primary determinant of painful stone passage, Emergency Department visits, and surgical retreatment) and patients’ experiences after ureteroscopy, shockwave lithotripsy, and percutaneous nephrolithotomy for patients 8 to 21 years of age.

The findings from this study will provide information that helps pediatric patients and their caregivers make individualized decisions on selecting the most appropriate surgical treatment option.

PKIDS Care Improvement Network

• An integrated and collaborative community of patients, caregivers, and clinicians
• Leverages a network of over 25 pediatric healthcare systems in North America
• Designed to generate a broad knowledge base of patient-centered outcomes and comparative effectiveness data on kidney stone treatment and surgery
• Established an interactive environment to generate and apply knowledge that improves outcomes that are most important to patients via a learning health system model

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