Extracorporeal shock waves were used in medicine for the first time in 1980, at the Institute for Surgical Research of the University of Munich for the treatment of a kidney stone.
The idea to use shock waves for lithotripsy (for the fragmentation of stones) of kidney stones was born by physicists from the Dornier company in Germany and form the University of Saarbrücken in Germany. In a co-operation with Walter Brendel, the former director of the Institute for Surgical Research of the university, the method was developed experimentally and introduced into clinical application. In 1985 the first gallstones were treated with shock waves at Institute for Surgical Research, and a short time later stones in the biliary tract and in the pancreatic duct.