Many know Cincinnati as the birthplace of pro baseball and America’s chili capital. In the acquisition of highly specialized equipment for our new surgery center, The Urology Group is positioning the city for another exciting distinction — the national and ultimately international go-to destination for the treatment of kidney stones.
The group has acquired from Siemens a diagnostic imaging system, and high tech equipment called a Lithoskop, that are one-of-a-kind in North America. Dr. Thorsten Bergsdorf, of Germany, visited Cincinnati in September to conduct training for physician members of our practice on the Lithoskop. As a result, we’ll become a national training hub on the use of the technology, and ultimately we’ll train physicians from around the world. I’d like to note that Dr. Bergsdorf is a leader in this field of medicine.
Nearly 12 percent of men and 5 percent of women in the United States deal with kidney stones during their lives and many describe the ordeal as the worst pain they’ve ever experienced. According to industry data, U.S. medical care for kidney stone removal and pain relief carries a $5.3 billion a year price tag.
Our center performs over 2000 lithotripsy treatments per year, more than any center in the country. This new machine provides better imaging of the stones and delivers more power to break up the stone than the machine we used previously, or other machines in the country.
Physicians within our group are very pleased that we can now offer patients dealing with kidney stone pain even better treatment!