Yes, and more and more are getting them. In the last few months, doctors at both Children’s Hospital in Boston and the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center have become so concerned that both institutions have set up special clinics to handle the increase.
“It used to be that we saw five cases a year,” said Dr. Yegappan Lakshmanan , a pediatric urologist and codirector of the Hopkins pediatric kidney stone clinic, set up last summer. “Now it seems like one a week.”
The increase may be due to rich diets as well as rising obesity and inadequate hydration, said Dr. Caleb Nelson , a pediatric urologist at the Children’s Hospital Boston Pediatric Kidney Stone Clinic, which opened this month .
The increase may also be due to doctors spotting more kidney stones in children because of better imaging technology: “We can now see tiny stones that wouldn’t have been seen before,” said Dr. John Foreman , chief of pediatric nephrology at Duke University.
Kidney stones in children are treated much as they are in adults: with surgery or lithotripsy, which breaks up stones by shock waves. It’s also important for parents to try to catch any kidney stone a child passes so it can be analyzed to find out what kind of stone it is and the best foods to consume or avoid to prevent more stones from forming.