Pretreatment with low-energy shock waves induces renal vasoconstriction during standard SWL: a treatment protocol known to reduce lithotripsy-induced renal injury

Introduction and Objective A great deal of effort has been focused on developing new treatment protocols to reduce tissue injury to improve the safety of shock wave lithotripsy. This has led to the discovery that pretreatment of the kidney with a series of low-energy shock waves (SWs) will substantially reduce the hemorrhagic lesion that normally results from a standard clinical dose of high-energy SWs. Because renal blood flow is reduced following low- or high-energy SWL, and may therefore contribute to this effect, this study was designed to test the hypothesis that the pretreatment protocol induces renal vasoconstriction sooner than the standard protocol for SW delivery.