Why Choose Us for Pediatric Kidney Stone Care
A focus on pediatric stone disease
Kidney stones were once thought of as an adult problem. CHOP’s Divisions of Urology and Nephrology used to treat just a handful of cases each year. But that has changed dramatically: The likelihood of a child developing a kidney stone has doubled in the past 25 years, and CHOP clinicians now see these cases every day. To deal with this growing problem, CHOP created the Pediatric Kidney Stone Center in 2014.
The mission of CHOP’s Pediatric Kidney Stone Center is to improve the health of all children with kidney stone disease. We provide every patient with a comprehensive evaluation and state-of-the-art treatment uniquely personalized for children. And we translate our research breakthroughs into better treatments and better outcomes for all children with kidney stones.
With our specialized care, your child is less likely to have kidney stones come back and can return to school and childhood activities sooner.
Deep knowledge and extensive experience
We treat many children and adolescents with kidney stones every year. Since 2013, we have evaluated and treated more than 2,300 patients and conducted more than 1,100 surgical procedures to remove kidney stones. Our center treats and manages patients from across the region, around the country, and from four different countries. This experience means that our team are experts in diagnosing and treating children with different types of kidney stones.
We are prepared to deliver the coordinated, personalized care your child needs.
Stone Center Patient Visits
This chart shows the volume of pediatric kidney stone office visits completed at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia's Division of Urology over the past five years (2020 through 2024).
Using our extensive experience, our team has created ways to ensure the proper tests are done at the right time to diagnose kidney stones, including a better way to evaluate kids in our Emergency Department for possible kidney stones.
Kidney Stone Procedures
This chart shows the volume of pediatric kidney stone procedures performed at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia's Division of Urology over the past five years (2020 through 2024).
Since 2010, we have conducted more than 1,125 unique stones’ procedures.
Coordinated care from a complete team
Our Pediatric Kidney Stone Center is part of the Division of Urology and the Division of Nephrology at CHOP. This team of urologists and nephrologists are essential for effective kidney stone diagnosis, treatment, and prevention.
Urologists focus on diagnosing kidney stones and their surgical management. Nephrologists specialize in managing the kidneys’ function and handling disorders that contribute to stones forming. When these specialists work together, your child’s kidney stone disease is addressed from multiple angles, improving the likelihood of a successful outcome and reducing the chances of complications or future stones.
In addition to urologists and nephrologists, we have specialists who can support all aspects of your child’s health, including psychologists, nutritionists, and metabolism experts. We also have doctors who take pictures of the inside of your child's body (radiologists) and doctors who help manage pain during surgery (anesthesiologists). We also coordinate care with other specialists who your child sees. These could include gastroenterologists, endocrinologists, and neurologists.
Our care doesn’t stop at the hospital doors. We even work with your child’s school to help things go as smoothly as possible for your child while they are receiving treatment.
All of our experts work together to make life better for your child and your family.
Care for now and the future
Our goal is to provide the best care for kids with kidney stones. We use the latest procedures to remove stones, like lasers and shockwave therapy.
CHOP’s Pediatric Kidney Stone Center has the most minimally invasive and advanced surgical equipment available. These instruments allow us to perform surgeries not possible anywhere else.
Our team includes many different kinds of doctors and specialists. After fully understanding the location and number of kidney stones, we will make a special treatment plan that includes medical care, nutrition counselling, surgery (if necessary), and emotional support.
We also focus on preventing more kidney stones from forming. To do this, we figure out what might cause more stones and make a plan to prevent them.
Making research breakthroughs
At CHOP, a select group of programs are designated as Frontier Programs. They conduct visionary research that translates to lifesaving treatment and cures, and they offer answers often not available anywhere else in the world. The Pediatric Kidney Stone Center has been designated one of these elite Frontier Programs.
We are working to revolutionize how we diagnose and evaluate patients with kidney stone disease.
Kidney stones develop when minerals and other substances become concentrated in the urine, causing them to crystallize. To help prevent future stones, we need to learn everything we can about what causes these minerals to build up in your child’s kidney.
We are developing a new test that could dramatically transform the diagnostic process. The test would enable earlier detection of kidney stones and provide a more detailed analysis of substances in a patient’s urine. This would be the first new urine test for kidney stone disease in 30 years. (Adults would benefit, too.)
More specifically, we’re studying patients’ gut and urine microbiomes and metabolomes. We are discovering molecules such as metabolites and proteins that are unique to pediatric kidney stone disease. These molecules could provide insight into severity of kidney stone disease and guide both surgical and medical treatment.