Original Article DOI 10.3349/ymj.2010.51.2.244 pISSN: 0513-5796, eISSN: 1976-2437 Yonsei Med J 51(2):244-247, 2010 Urolithiasis in Patients Suffering from Malignant Hematologic Diseases Sae Woong Kim,1 Sung Dae Kim,2 Je Mo Yoo,1 Yong-Hyun Cho,1 and Dong Wan Sohn1 1Department of Urology, College of Medicine, The Catholic University of Korea, Seoul; 2Department of Urology, College of Medicine, Jeju National University, Jeju, Korea. Purpose: We performed this study in order to evaluate the incidence and characteristics of urolithiasis in patients with malignant hematologic diseases. Materials and Methods: Nine hundred one patients who underwent medical treatment for malignant hematologic disease and 40,543 patients who visited the emergency room and without malignant hematologic diseases were included in our study. The patients with malignant hematologic diseases were divided into two groups depending on their primary treatment. Group I included patients with acute and chronic leukemia (AML, ALL, CML, CLL) for which chemotherapy and steroid therapy was necessary, and group II included patients with anaplastic anemia and myelodysplastic syndrome and who had undergone repeated transfusion for treatment. Comparisons were made between the two groups in respect to the incidence of urolithiasis and the stones’ radiopacity. Results: Twenty nine patients (3.2%) of the 901 malignant hematologic patients were diagnosed with urolithiasis, compared to 575 patients (1.4%) of 40,543 emergency room patients. There was a significant increase of the incidence of urolithiasis in the malignant hematologic group. Compared to the general patients, the patients with malignant hematologic diseases had a higher rate of radiolucent stones (46.6% versus 16.3%, respectively), and the difference was significant. Conclusion: The incidence of urolithiasis for malignant hematologic patients was significantly higher than that for the control group. Key Words: Malignant hematologic disease, urolithiasis, incidence Received: December 22, 2008 Revised: May 25, 2009 Accepted: June 2, 2009 Corresponding author: Dr. Dong Wan Sohn, Department of Urology, College of Medicine, The Catholic University of Korea, 62 Yeouido-dong, Yeongdeungpo-gu, Seoul 150-713, Korea. Tel: 82-2-3779-1038, Fax: 82-2-761-1626 E-mail: druroking@catholic.ac.kr ∙The authors have no financial conflicts of interest. © Copyright: Yonsei University College of Medicine 2010 244 INTRODUCTION Urolithiasis is one of the most common urologic diseases, and its incidence and prevalence is generally reported between 0.1-0.3% and 5-10% in the general population.1 Although there is still debate regarding the causes of stone, the risk factors that are known to contribute to stone occurrence are Caucasian race, the male gender, a family history of urolithiasis, immobilization, urinary infection, glucocorticoid therapy, hypercalcemia, hyperuricuria, hyperoxaluria, hypocitria, etc. The role of glucocorticoid is particularly striking in patients treated with con- solidation chemotherapy for acute leukemia. Howard, et al.2 reported that the rate of urolithiasis was 4.5 times higher for patients during induction therapy and 2.2 times higher for patients during consolidation therapy using pulsatile gluco- corticoids than that for patients who had completed therapy. Despite anticipating a high incidence of stone due to the characteristic therapy for patients suffering from malignant hematologic diseases, there have been few studies on this in the English medical literature. Therefore, we performed this study to find incidences and characteristics of urolithiasis in patients with malignant hematologic diseases. Yonsei Med J http://www.eymj.org Volume 51 Number 2 March 2010