When surgeons remove a bladder for cancer, one option is to build a new one from a segment of the patient's own intestine. The reconstruction, called a neobladder, preserves normal voiding and body image, and it comes with a maintenance requirement that is easy to underestimate: patients must catheterize and irrigate on a schedule, indefinitely.
A case report from a urology team at Université Mohammed V in Rabat, Morocco, documents what can happen when that instruction is abandoned. Doctors removed two stones from a single neobladder, weighing a combined 950 grams, just over two pounds, after the patient had gone 18 years without urological care.
