Strategies to Maximise Patient Comfort During ESWL

Extracorporeal shockwave lithotripsy is an outpatient treatment for patients with intrarenal calculi. Standard of care involves offering oral analgesia prior to commencing the treatment. Most patients do not take the offered analgesia after the initial treatment. It has been suggested that distraction techniques may be equivalent to oral analgesia in improving tolerability of extracorporeal shockwave lithotripsy treatment. The use of distraction techniques also removes the potential side effects of mediation administration.