SPECIAL ARTICLE - CALCULUS BREAKABILITY FRAGILITY AND DURABILITY

Prior to the use of lithotripsy techniques, there was no requirement f or a vocabulary to describe the relative breakability of a urinary cal culus. With the introduction of lithotripsy, we became aware that calc uli of different radiologic appearances or chemical compositions varie d in their susceptibility to fragmentation. Because all truly new dist inctions require new expressions to characterize them, we had to creat e a term to express this new distinction, and the term we chose was '' stone fragility.'' Currently, if we see a 1-cm calcium oxalate dihydra te stone, we say it appears fragile (''easily broken,'' from the Latin frangere, ''to break'', but if we see a dense brushite or a cystine s tone, we can describe it only in terms of fragile; i.e., ''not fragile '' or, incorrectly, ''hard'': an antonym for ''fragile'' does not exis t. In the interest of common understanding and more accurate quantitat ion of stone breakability, a neologism is suggested that has an approp riate Latin root, is easily spoken, sounds authentic, and is useful. I t is proposed that, in the interest of accuracy and as a reflection of our greater sophistication regarding stone breakability, we use the L atin root dur (hard, difficult) and a suffix ile (of, like, pertaining to) to create the terms ''durile'' (adj; pertaining to or capable of being difficult to break) and ''durility'' (noun; a quality of being d ifficult to break or fragment).