This minimally-invasive treatment usually requires general anesthesia (asleep, no pain), but you may go home the same day.

The doctor uses an endoscope (a tube introduced into the body, via the urinary tract) in order to get close to the stone. A small fiber is snaked up the endoscope so that the tip (that emits the laser energy) can come in contact with the stone, the intense light energy breaks the stone into increasingly smaller pieces, which can be extracted or flushed out. Because of type of laser energy no other tissue is affected.

Below is the picture of the stone in the ureter: