Current trend in the treatment of patients with nephrolithiasis is decreasing of the invasiveness of the surgery. Recent technical innovations for effective stone disintegration, permanent kidney access, good visualization of endoscopy and decrease in the instruments size raised the urological interest in efficacy and improvements in the area of retrograde intrarenal surgery (RIRS) for large and staghorn urinary stones. It is typical for RIRS to have high efficacy (50-94.6%) and low rate of perioperative complications.

We have found approximately 200 works from the last 5 years dedicated to the RIRS of upper tract stone disease. This indicates at substantial popularity of this method.

The aim of our review was to summarize this experience in RIRS for treatment of large and staghorn kidney stones. In the article we depicted main steps in the development of RIRS and capabilities of this treatment modality, main technical details of the procedure and also showed data on the efficacy, economical aspects and complications in respect to the large and staghorn kidney stones.