About us

The Minnesota Urolith Center provides Quantitative urolith analysis utilizing Polarizing Light Microscopy and Infrared Spectroscopy. Additional methodologies available include X-ray Crystallography. We provide recommendations on urolith dissolution and prevention for canine and feline submissions.

Our database includes over 1.7 million veterinary samples containing epidemiologic data identifying risk factors for urolithiasis.

Our clinicians offer consultation services and perform lectures and seminars around the world to disseminate knowledge about management of urolithiasis

Expertise available at the University of Minnesota, Veterinary Medical Center include:

  • medical/nutritional dissolution,
  • laser lithotripsy,
  • voiding urohydropropulsion, and
  • basket retrieval.

The Minnesota Urolith Center is all about minimizing pain and avoiding invasive surgery. Our goal is to investigate minimally invasive ways to diagnose, remove, and prevent urolithiasis. We are compassion driven to change the future.

The Center is supported by an educational gift from Hill’s Pet Nutrition and private contributions from veterinary professionals and pet owners. Through these subsidies, the Center is able to provide analysis service at no charge. 

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1.5 million stones and counting

Jody Lulich with cat on an exam table

Dr. Jody Lulich is the Director of the Minnesota Urolith Center, and a world-renowned expert in the field of urolithiasis and other urinary tract diseases in dogs and cats.  Dr Lulich and Dr Eva Furrow are two of the only veterinarians in Minnesota who perform laser lithotripsy. They both are on clinics at the Veterinary Medical Center.

Committed to the prevention and cure of urinary diseases, the Center has been in operation since 1981. The center has received uroliths from over 1.7 million patients. The majority of stones are from cats and dogs, and they come to the Center from around the world.

“There are more effective, more compassionate treatments than surgery for most patients with urinary stones,” Lulich says. Lulich frequently recommends nutritional changes that may dissolve stones and reduce the risk of recurrence. If removal is necessary, laser lithotripsy has proven to be quite a successful method. “You do not need to cut into healthy tissue. The laser pulverizes the stones into minute fragments that can be easily removed without surgery, and animals go home the same day with no restrictions on activity and no cones around their heads.”

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Our history

In 1981, Dr. Carl Osborne established the Minnesota Urolith Center at the University of Minnesota to investigate the causes, cures, and prevention of urolithiasis.  Today, the Urolith Center is the largest veterinary stone analysis laboratory in the world.  Using state-of-the-science diagnostic techniques, the Center currently analyzes almost 90,000 stones per year submitted by veterinarians from 70 countries throughout the world.  Since its inception, the Center has analyzed more than 1.7 million uroliths from more than 100 species of companion, farm, exotic, aquatic, and wild animals.   
Some Minnesota Urolith Center Milestones

  • The first group to develop the safe and effective technique of retrograde urohydropropulsion.
  • First to develop and recommend the technique of decompressive cystocentesis for the management of urethral and urinary bladder flow obstruction. 
  • First to develop the technique of voiding urohydropropulsion for the nonsurgical removal of small urocystoliths. 
  • Developed a technique for non-surgical retrieval of urocystoliths with a transurethral urinary catheter. 
  • Developed nutritional dissolution techniques for struvite, urate and cystine urolithiasis.