In the United States, one in 10 men and one in 14 women have had a kidney stone. Unless the kidney stone is too large to pass on its own, the treatment prescribed is usually plenty of fluids and painkillers while letting it pass over a period of several days. Jeremy Brown, M.D., associate professor of emergency medicine at the George Washington University (GW) School of Medicine and Health Sciences, has received a grant that will ideally give this increasingly large group of patients more options with fewer complications.
Brown received a four-year, $4,198,046 cooperative agreement research project grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases to explore new ways to treat kidney stones. His research project, titled "Multi-Center Study of Tamsulosin for Ureteral Stones in the Emergency Department," will enroll patients with kidney stones in three Emergency Departments (EDs), including the ED at GW, and randomize them to either an active medication called Tamsulosin or a placebo.
"I originally became interested in this because I saw Tamsulosin being used by some urologists," said Brown. "I realized it hadn't actually been studied in a rigorous way."