[Incidence and prevalence of published studies about urolithiasis in Spain. A review]

San Antonio, Somacarrera (1977) and Rousaud-Inmark (1984) studies established the first data of incidence and prevalence about urolithiasis in Spain. Other regional or national epidemiologic details were given for several authors from 1977 to 2002.

Sixteen papers with original data about incidence or prevalence have been selected, 5 of them are about incidence, 8 about prevalence and 3 include both. Ten papers are based on poblational research (San Antonio, Martin, Pedrajas, Rousaud-Inmark, Torres, Ripa, Romero, Grases, Alapont, Aíbar), 5 on subjective estimations (Solé-Balcells, Cifuentes, Puigvert, Serrallach, Conte) and one include both (Somacarrera). Seven papers are nationwide and 9 are about local areas. A map with different location studies is presented and a data register show incidence and prevalence medians.

The Spanish median urolithiasis incidence is 0.73%, corresponding to 325,079 new cases per year; and the prevalence is 5.06%, corresponding to 2,233,214 cases.

Methodologically the best epidemiologic studies about lithiasis are based on general population survey. The commonest slant is extract data from retrospective clinical registers. Most studies have significant methodological difficulties, but they reflected interest about epidemiology of stone disease in Spain. There is a concordance between Spanish results and international published data.