General Health

It is usually accompanied by sweating and vomiting. The person often rolls around the floor or the bed and cannot lie still.
Urine will often need to be passed frequently and will usually contain blood. If the stone passes through the full length of the ureter and drops into the bladder, the pain will usually cease.

It may be passed to the outside with the urine and may cause no further pain as the urethra, the tube which carries the urine from the bladder to the outside, is wider than the ureter in both men and women.

Strong pain-relieving drugs like pethidine, a derivative of morphine, are usually needed to relieve renal or ureteric colic.
Stones are usually diagnosed by the symptoms but can be confirmed by X-ray. A plain X-ray of the abdomen may not be enough and an outline of the kidneys, ureters and the bladder can be obtained by an intravenous pyelogram (IVP), which also shows kidney function.

A radio-opaque dye, injected into a vein, is excreted by the kidneys. Serial X-rays show the outline of the renal system and can show any abnormalities, including stones.

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General health