Dr Ashish Patil, an urosurgeon and andrologist from Dhule has entered the Guinness Book of World Records for removing the most kidney stones from a patient's kidney. Dr Patil, director of Tejnaksh Healthcare's Institute of Urology, removed more than 1.72 lakh kidney stones from the left kidney of
a Dhule resident, Dhanraj Wadile, last December.

Dr Patil's entry to the Guinness Book was declared on October 20. "The Guinness team took time to verify world-wide records. The earlier record holder, a doctor from Nashik, had removed 14,098 kidney stones," said Dr Patil.

Wadile, 45, was suffering from severe lower abdominal pain for the last six months. "I had stopped eating and going to work," said Wadile, a paan shop owner. When Wadile was referred to Dr Patil he discovered that Wadile had an uncommon birth defect where his kidney was abnormally positioned in the pelvic and had an obstruction. Approximately 2 to 4 per 1,000 population in the world suffer from this Pelvi-Ureteric Junction obstruction.

"We made a detailed plan of the surgery because it was revealed after the investigations that patient had a huge number of renal stones," said Dr Patil.

During the four-hour operation, doctors used both open surgery and flexible endoscopy. "The surgery was complicated due to the number of kidney stones. It was difficult to remove so many stones from his kidney. These stones were anywhere between the size of 1mm to 2.5cm," said Dr Patil.

"The possibility of leaving some stones behind was one of the risks as it could have jeopardised the surgery. Bigger stones had to be tackled individually. We also did a plastic surgery to widen the opening of the kidney," said Dr Patil.

"This condition is seen from time to time but is not very common. I have not come across such a huge number of stones in a patient," said Dr Vinod Joshi, consultant, urologist, PD Hinduja Hospital, Mumbai.