Highland Hospital Offers New ‘SuperPulsed’ Laser System For Treatment of Patients with Kidney Stones

Highland is first in area to use Olympus Soltive™ Laser System

Friday, April 23, 2021

Highland Hospital is the first hospital in the Rochester region to offer the Olympus Soltive Laser System, a new option for treating patients who suffer from kidney stones. Soltive is a laser technology that enables physicians to provide quicker and more efficient stone removal, which may translate to shorter procedure times and less patient discomfort. This improved laser technology will allow Highland physicians to more effectively treat patients requiring lithotripsy.

More than half a million Americans are diagnosed with kidney stone issues each year, and one in 10 people will have a kidney stone in their lifetime according to the National Kidney Foundation. Left untreated, kidney stones can block the ureters or cause kidney infections and kidney damage.

“This state-of-the-art technology is changing the way we can treat people with larger, more difficult stones, and we are excited to be able to bring the very latest in kidney-stone laser technology to our patients at Highland Hospital,” said Ahmed Ghazi, M.D., M.Sc., Urological Surgeon at Highland Hospital and Associate Professor of Urology at the University of Rochester Medical Center. “The results our patients are already seeing with this new device are extraordinary.”

Dr. Ghazi, along with his colleagues, conducted one of the first clinical trials that demonstrated a two-times enhanced ablation efficiency and four-times improved speed of the Soltive laser compared to patients treated with the standard laser. The resulting stone-free rates for patients with large stones were almost twice that of the standard laser in half the time.[1] Future work in Dr. Ghazi’s laboratory will focus on personalizing the wide array of laser settings for each patients’ stone consistency.

For more information about Highland Hospital’s surgical capabilities, please call the UR Medicine Department of Urology at (585) 275-2838.

---