Nutritional Management of Unknown Types of Stones

Abstract

Chemical stone analysis combined with clinical assessment, blood work, and a 24-hour urine collection can be very helpful to determine how best to prevent future stones. However, not all patients have the benefit of stone collection. Kidney stones may be incidentally noticed on imaging or may pass without notice. Those patients with unknown stones pose a challenge for medical and dietary management and require thoughtful analysis of the data available as well as good general understanding of stone prevention strategies. Blood work, imaging, and a 24-hour urine collection may give insight about the type of stone. The key to management is focusing on strategies that will decrease the risk of multiple stone types while at the same time avoiding dietary modification that could inadvertently increase the risk of stone formation. Generally safe and reasonable dietary recommendations include adequate fluid intake of 2.5–3 liters a day, low sodium, adequate amount of dietary calcium intake, animal protein restriction, and weight loss, if necessary.