Computation and modeling of the stone-growth related urinary depletion effect using "depletion V1.0"

During metabolic evaluation stone patients often present with calculi in the urinary tract or are suffering from high frequent formation of small microliths passing routinely the urinary tract. These concrements are presumably in a state of continuous growth. Consequently, the concentrations of the lithogenic components in the voided urine must decrease. Thus, treatment schemes inevitably fail to focus on the true pathogenic urinary composition. Instead, they focus on underestimated concentrations. This can attain high clinical relevance. In recent publications, we introduced a complex physical approach and provided mathematical equations which can be solved analytically. However, to date, solving the equations with a pocket calculator remains cumbersome.

Depletion V1.0 was developed to integrate the calculation of the depletion effect into the daily treatment of stone patients. Minimum requirement for Depletion V1.0 is the Java 1.2 platform runtime environment, which is supported on nearly all operation systems including Linux, MacOS X, and Windows. The program can be used directly within a Java-compliant web browser (e.g. Firefox, Mozilla, Internet Explorer) or from the program's storage location. The implemented data base provides stone type relevant parameters. Data input is performed via an easy-to-handle graphical user interface.

Results are given as values and interactive plots; computation and update of plots are performed in real time. Result sheets can be exported to platform-independent EPS-format or printed out directly.

Depletion V1.0 enables the medical practitioner to obtain an improved interpretation of the stone patient's health status. As input, only one set of easy-to-achieve clinical standard parameters is required. The program will be available from the authors as freeware.