Doctors remove 3.1kg stone from man’s bladder

Doctors in Sri Lanka successfully removed a massive 3.1kg bladder stone from a 55-year-old man last week, a procedure believed to be the largest of its kind ever documented. The patient, who had been admitted to Trincomalee Hospital after experiencing a stroke, was found to have stones in his urinary bladder while being treated for difficulty urinating. The 17cm-wide stone, comparable in size to an ostrich egg, weighed as much as a full-term baby and had been lodged in the man's bladder for approximately five to 10 years.

During the surgery, led by Dr Prahalahan Balakrishnan, the team extracted the gigantic stone, which was believed to have been present in the patient's bladder for an extended period. According to Dr Balakrishnan, who shared the news with BBC Sinhala, the patient was in "very good health" post-surgery. The patient remains at the hospital to continue treatment for his other medical conditions.

Bladder stones, formed when minerals crystallize in urine, typically develop when the bladder does not empty completely, resulting in concentrated urine that crystallizes. While small stones can pass on their own, larger ones, measuring more than 4cm, often necessitate medical intervention. The Guinness World Records list the largest bladder stone removed from a patient in Brazil in 2003, which weighed 1.9kg and measured 17.9cm in length.