Purpose: The subjective pain felt by patients during shockwave lithotripsy (SWL) and need of analgesics in patients with urinary stones were investigated. Materials and Methods: Between September 2004 and January 2006, one hundred and ninety seven SWLs were undertaken (151 patients) using a SDS 5000 (spark gap type, Comed, Korea). Ninety-five and 102 cases proceeded without premedication (no analgesics group) and diclofenac sodium, 1mg/kg IM, respectively, 30 minutes before lithotripsy

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... cs group). After the procedure, the subjective pain was estimated using a prospective questionnaire, with a 10-point visual analogue scale. Results: The average subjective pain scores were 3.77 and 3.25 in the non analgesics and analgesics groups, respectively. There was no significantly difference between the two groups. However, the pain scores in the analgesics group were significantly lower in females (3.37 vs. 4.71) and cases of first SWL (3.10 vs. 4.09). In the no analgesics group, the pain score was not affected by the laterality, stone size, location of stone and tolerability, but was affected by sex, age and number of SWL attempts. In the analgesics group, the pain score was only affected by age. Seventy eight percent (74/95) and 63% (64/102) of the patients in the no analgesics and analgesics groups agreed that analgesic should not be recommended to other patients. Conclusions: The subjective pain during SWL was tolerable; therefore, routine analgesics are not required. However, on the initial SWL in young female patient, the application of analgesics is considerable.