symptom of kidney stones : Medications

Medicine you can buy without a prescription, such as nonsteroidal anti-inflammatories (NSAIDs), may relieve your pain. Your doctor can give you stronger pain medicine if needed. NSAIDs include aspirin, ibuprofen (such as Motrin and Advil), and ketoprofen.

If you get more kidney stones despite drinking more fluids and making changes to your diet, your doctor may give you medicine to help dissolve your stones or to prevent new ones from forming. You may also receive prescription medicine if you have a disease that increases your risk of forming kidney stones. Which medicine you take depends on the type of stones you have.

Medication Choices

Medicine to prevent calcium stones

About 80% of people who have kidney stones have calcium stones. 1

Thiazides (such as hydrochlorothiazide, chlorthalidone) and potassium citrate (Urocit-K) are commonly used to prevent calcium stones.
Orthophosphate (Neutra-Phos) and cellulose phosphate (Calcibind) are sometimes used. They have more side effects than thiazides or potassium citrate.
Calcium carbonate or citrate (Tums, Citracal) and cholestyramine (Questran) may be used to prevent calcium stones if you have high levels of oxalate in your urine.
Medicine to prevent uric acid stones

About 10% of kidney stones are made of uric acid, a waste product that normally exits the body in the urine. 1

Potassium citrate (Urocit-K) and sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) prevent the urine from becoming too acidic, which helps prevent uric acid stones.
Allopurinol (Lopurin, Zyloprim) makes it more difficult for your body to make uric acid.
Medicine to prevent cystine stones

Less than 1% of kidney stones are made of a chemical called cystine. 1 Cystine stones are more likely to occur in families with a disease that results in too much cystine in the urine (cystinuria).

Penicillamine (Cuprimine, Depen), tiopronin (Thiola), and captopril (Capoten) all help keep cystine dissolved in the urine, which makes cystine-type kidney stones less likely to form.
Potassium citrate (Urocit-K) prevents the urine from becoming too acidic, which helps prevent cystine kidney stones from forming.
Medicine to prevent struvite stones

About 10% to 15% of kidney stones are struvite stones. 1 They can also be called infection stones if they occur with kidney or urinary tract infections (UTIs). These types of kidney stones sometimes are also called staghorn calculi if they grow large enough.

Urease inhibitors (Lithostat) are rarely used because of their side effects and are usually only a treatment method if stone removal procedures cannot be used or fail to remove the stone
What To Think About

If you have uric acid stones or cystine stones and are taking medicine to prevent more stones from forming, you will usually have to continue taking that medicine for the rest of your life.

Some struvite stones (staghorn calculi) form because of frequent kidney infections. You will usually need antibiotics and surgery to cure the infection and help prevent new stones from forming.