[Ureteral lithiasis, what treatment?]

Extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy and ureteroscopy are minimal invasive techniques, both of which have definitively become essential for the treatment of ureteral stones resistant to conservative treatment. At the time of evidence-based medicine, no study makes it possible to recommend one of these methods rather than the other. For stones of identical size and location, this review of the literature shows that extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy and ureteroscopy prove of comparable effectiveness and innocuousness. The urologist thus has two alternatives of which the technical control, the availability of the endoscopes or lithotriptors as well as the desire and comfort of the patients are the factors which condition his choice of the method for the treatment of ureteral stones.