Kumasi Hospital Removes 880-Gram Bladder Stone In Rare Surgical Case

By Dominic Duut – Kumasi, Ashanti Region

A team of doctors at Kumasi Hospital, a private health facility in the Ashanti Region, has successfully removed an 880-gram bladder stone from a 49-year-old man in what the surgical team believes could be one of the largest such stones ever removed in Africa.

The stone measures 11.8 centimetres in length, 9.5 centimetres in breadth and nearly 8 centimetres in width.

At first glance, it resembles a ball of clay. However, the oval-shaped mass is a giant bladder stone — a hard, crystallised formation that developed inside the bladder of the patient, identified as Akoto, not his real name.

For nearly three decades, he endured severe pain, urinary difficulties and a gradual decline in his quality of life.

“It was really painful. Not being able to urinate is something I wouldn’t wish for anyone,” he said.

What may have begun as tiny mineral crystals gradually developed into an enormous stone, affecting his health and daily life.

The surgical team believes the stone is arguably the largest bladder stone documented as having been removed in Africa.

“We searched medical literature from the continent, but we couldn’t find any documented and removed bladder stone as big as this one. It was originally 980 grammes.

But even after desiccating for over a day, the size is still the largest,” the Chief Executive Officer of Kumasi Hospital, Dr (Med) Samuel Koranteng Asante, told Luv FM’s Emmanuel Bright Quaicoe.

According to Guinness World Records, the largest bladder stone on record was removed from a patient in Brazil in 2003. It weighed 1.9 kilogrammes and measured 17.9 centimetres in length.

Another record-breaking case was reported in Sri Lanka in August 2026, when doctors removed a 3.1-kilogramme bladder stone from a 55-year-old man.