I had a bunch of stones in my twenties. First 2 urologists just dealt with the symptoms with pain meds and busting them up. Finally found a doc who was interested in finding out the cause. I did a 24 hr. urine study and found the problem. My kidney was not pulling enough citrate out of the urine in the kidney. So now I take 12 pills of potassium citrate/day. 15 yrs later, not a stone since. Moral to the story is find a good doc and get it figured out.