Background. The efficacy of percutaneous nephrolithotripsy is currently assessed using computed tomography, whose wide implementation in clinical practice is limited by economic reasons and the risk of high radiation doses during the disease monitoring period. Aim. To demonstrate the high predictive precision of nomograms, which are valuable for assessing the expected efficacy of interventions.

Materials and methods. Publications devoted to 4 main systems used to assess the expected results of percutaneous nephrolithotripsy – Guy’s, S.T.O.N.E., CROES and S-ReSC – were reviewed. In total, 37 publications were analysed.

Results. The Guy’s scale for the evaluation of concrements provided 79.6% precision of the evaluation of the clinical effectiveness of percutaneous nephrolithotripsy by the results of the multivariate analysis as an isolated factor. The S.T.O.N.E. index had a 71.6-80% mean summed effectiveness by the studies dedicated to the verification of the S.T.O.N.E. index under 83.1% of predictive precision. The predictive value of the GROES nomogram was 0.76, which is significantly higher than the above-mentioned Guy’s scale (0.69). The statistical precision of the GROES nomogram was 71.5% for a successful intervention and 64.8% for the complete removal of the concrement from the kidney. The predictive precision of the S-ReSC system in the evaluation of the effectiveness of the treatment was 0.86, which was confirmed by a multivariate analysis.

Conclusions. The obtained results demonstrate a high prognostic value of different evaluation systems. However, the efficacy of all these systems depend on the subjective interpretation of the most important nephrolithometric parameters performed by specialists.

Conflict of interest. The authors declare no conflict of interest.