Ureteral Stents
Dr. Justin Ziemba
Video Transcript
Hello, my name is Justin Ziemba
and today we’re gonna talk about ureteral stents
and devices used to drain the urinary system
after your kidney stone surgery.
As you’re probably aware, the urinary system is responsible
for draining urine out of the body.
And one of the things that we can use
after surgery to help that process both for healing as well
as to bypass any blockage
of the urinary tract from things such
as kidney stones are objects like ureteral stents
and nephrostomy tubes.
So here I have an example of what is a nephrostomy tube
and a ureteral stent is very similar,
has a little coil on the end that allows it
to stay in place in the urinary tracts,
sometimes a little drainage option to allow it to connect
to a bag to drain urine from the body
or it’ll be all on the inside of the body.
A ureteral stent is usually made out of plastic
that’s medical grade.
And like I said before, it can be used to unblock the urinary tracts
to allow urine to flow around a
blockage such as a kidney stone and
what happens is when these stents are inserted is they are
usually temporary.
They often have a maximum life expectancy in the body
of about three months,
but often are changed much sooner
after surgery, often these can be put in temporarily
to allow the healing process to occur
and then be taken out either with a small scope
or via something like a little string.
When they are in place, they often can cause
symptoms such as feeling like the urge to go to the bathroom
and urinate more frequent,
frequently feeling like you don’t empty your bladder
completely, or issues such as burning or blood in the urine.
Those are very common and they do resolve once the tube
or the stent is removed.
I hope that explains urinary stents
and other drainage tubes.
Thanks for listening. Take care.