Kidney stones

Kidney stones can develop in one or both kidneys and most often affect people aged 30 to 60.

They’re quite common, with around 3 in 20 men and up to 2 in 20 women developing them at some stage of their lives.

The medical term for kidney stones is nephrolithiasis, and if they cause severe pain it’s known as renal colic.

Symptoms

Small kidney stones may go undetected and be passed out painlessly in the urine. But it’s fairly common for a stone to block part of the urinary system, such as the:

ureter – the tube connecting the kidney to the bladder urethra – the tube urine passes through on its way out of the body

A blockage can cause severe pain in the abdomen or groin and sometimes causes a urinary tract infection (UTI).

Read more about the symptoms of kidney stones.


Very small kidney stones are unlikely to cause many symptoms. It may even go undetected and pass out painlessly when you urinate.

Symptoms usually occur if the kidney stone:

gets stuck in your kidney starts to travel down the ureter (the tube that attaches each kidney to the bladder) – the ureter is narrow and kidney stones can cause pain as they try to pass through causes an infection

In these cases, the symptoms of kidney stones can include:

a persistent ache in the lower back, which is sometimes also felt in the groin – men may have pain in their testicles and scrotum periods of intense pain in the back or side of your abdomen, or occasionally in your groin, which may last for minutes or hours feeling restless and unable to lie still nausea (feeling sick) needing to urinate more often than normal pain when you urinate (dysuria) blood in your urine (haematuria) – this may be caused by the stone scratching the kidney or ureter