[Urolithiasis guidelines: retrospective view and perspectives].

The first German guidelines on urolithiasis were published in four sections in "Der Urologe A" in 1997 and were listed at The Association of the Scientific Medical Societies in Germany (AWMF) in 1999. The European Association of Urology (EAU) published the first guidelines on urolithiasis in 2000. All guidelines must be updated on a regular basis. Guidelines should represent the highest level of evidence for the best diagnostic and therapeutic procedures, independent of economic pressure. Guidelines should safeguard optimal patient care and also serve as a basis for education and training of healthcare professionals. They are a tool for quality management and for national healthcare structures and strategies as well as for the judicature. Medical guidelines form the foundation for the elaboration of local clinical treatment pathways, which are the bridge to treatment of patients and also take economic and regional circumstances into consideration. In the future information technology (IT) could play an even more important role for both the complex methods of establishing guidelines and their implementation. The contents of guidelines could then be directly integrated into the clinical pathway, if necessary or into electronic patient charts in order to propose a medically and financially optimized treatment pathway. Because of the complexity of producing guidelines, they will in part be produced at a national level and adapted to the regional circumstances. Future technical, medical and genetic developments will lead to a multidisciplinary and multiprofessional cooperation in the production of guidelines.