Back Pain and Pain When Urinating? It Could Be Kidney Stones

Under normal circumstances, you don’t think twice about urinating — it’s a common enough thing that you do many times a day. These days, however, urinating has become a painful process. Aside from painful urination, you might also be experiencing low back pain and some nausea.

These are all signs that can point to kidney stones, which are an extremely common condition that affects about 1 in 10 people.

To help you take another step toward figuring out what’s driving your symptoms, the experienced team at Arizona Urology takes a deeper dive into kidney stones below. From painful urination to low back pain, and much more, here are the main symptoms associated with kidney stones and what steps you should take next.

A quick review of kidney stones 

Your kidneys are small organs on either side of your abdomen that are charged with filtering your blood to control levels of sodium, potassium, and calcium.

The waste that’s the byproduct of this filtration system is then expelled through your urine.

When you have kidney stones, there’s a buildup of minerals, acids, or other substances that form hardened deposits called stones. In 80% of cases, kidney stones are formed by calcium oxalate and calcium phosphate. The balance of stones are mostly made up of uric acid, struvite, and cystine.

Whatever the stone is made up of, it can become symptomatic if it gets large enough and/or tries to pass from your kidneys into your ureter. 

Signs of kidney stones

Kidney stones can develop over years, and you may not experience any symptoms until they try to exit the kidney. When this happens, you might experience:

• Sharp pain in your back and side (the side of the affected kidney)
• Lower abdominal pain
• Men can feel pain at the tip of the penis
• Feeling intense urges to urinate
• Frequent urination
• Blood in your urine (hematuria)
• Foul-smelling, cloudy urine
• Nausea and vomiting

The symptoms related to pain, as well as the nausea and vomiting, often come in waves as the stone tries to make its way down your urinary tract. As you might imagine, the pain is often more severe with larger stones.

Next steps if you suspect kidney stones

If you’re experiencing any of the symptoms we outline above, we strongly urge you to see us for an evaluation. Not only can we take steps to relieve your discomfort, but we also want to help you avoid the complications of untreated kidney stones, including kidney infection and chronic kidney disease.

When you come in, we’ll sit down and review your symptoms, and then we might use advanced imaging, such as an ultrasound, to check for the presence of kidney stones. What we find during this assessment will dictate next steps, but rest assured, we’ll work quickly to help you find relief.

For excellent diagnosis and care of kidney stones, look no further than Arizona Urology. To sit down with one of our kidney stone experts, we invite you to contact us at one of our offices in Phoenix, Goodyear, Gilbert, and Glendale, Arizona, today to schedule an appointment.