Pulse.

a daily field guide to health research that matters

◆ Console

‹ Tue · 18 Aug 2026
Promising but preliminary

Effects of General Versus Regional Anaesthesia on Surgical Outcomes and Early Postoperative Sequelae in Minimally Invasive Surgery for Urinary Calculi: A Meta-analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials.

Regional anesthesia may reduce post-operative pain and speed recovery compared to general anesthesia for kidney stone removal surgery.

To systematically compare general anaesthesia (GA) and regional anaesthesia in patient undergoing minimally invasive surgery for urinary calculi, focusing on operative outcomes (e.g., operative time, length of hospital stay, stone-free rate [SFR]) and early postoperative outcomes (e.g., pain measured by the visual analog scale [VAS] and complication rate), and to provide evidence to guide anaesthetic selection. PubMed, Embase, and the Cochrane Library were searched from database inception to December 2025 for randomized controlled trials (RCTs) comparing GA with regional anaesthesia in minimally invasive urinary stone procedures.

What the study was

Study design
Randomized Controlled Trial
Population
Adult patients
Sample size
525
Category
Other
Maturity
Potentially Practice-Changing
Journal
Archivos espanoles de urologia

Why it surfaced

Score 8/10: Randomized Controlled Trial, mixed model, Potentially Practice-Changing; flag=PROMISING_PRELIMINARY

A plain-language summary of published research — not medical advice. Talk to a clinician about your own care.