Research issues of concern: Scientific and medical

Extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy has now been applied for human stone therapy for over a decade. Aside from the fact that we know that this is an effective modality to fragment stones, what do we really know about these high energy shock waves? Clearly, many questions exist. The answers to these questions are of differing interests to both the medical and basic scientific communities. It is the purpose of this paper to explore some basic questions regarding lithotripsy expressed in terms of relative concern to both medicine and science.