Abstract: OBJECTIVE To explore the risk factors for renal pelvis infection in patients with renal staghorn calculi and the expression levels of osteopontin (OPN) and nuclear factor κB (NF-κB) in renal tissues. METHODS A total of 126 patients with renal staghorn calculi who were treated in Chongqing Fengdu People's Hospital from Jan 2016 to Jan 2021 were enrolled in the study, all of the patients underwent percutaneous nephrolithotripsy and were divided into the infection group with 38 cases and the no infection group with 88 cases according to the status of postoperative renal pelvis infection. The distribution of pathogens and the risk factors for renal pelvis infection were analyzed, the expression levels of OPN and NF-κB in renal tissues were compared between the two groups of patients, and the clinical values of the indexes in prediction of postoperative renal pelvis infection were observed. RESULTS Totally 44 strains of pathogens were isolated from the 38 patients with renal pelvis infection, 36(81.82%) of which were gram-negative bacteria, 7 (15.91%) were gram-positive bacteria, and 1 (2.27%) was fungus. Multivariate analysis showed that gender(OR=2.188), degree of hydronephrosis(OR=2.633) and history of diabetes mellitus (OR=1.530) were the risk factors for renal pelvis infection(P＜0.05). The expression levels of OPN and NF-κB of the infection group were significantly higher than those of the no infection group (P＜0.05). Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis indicated that the area under curve (AUC) of the joint detection of renal tissue OPN and NF-κB was 0.915 in prediction of postoperative renal pelvis infection, with the sensitivity 93.75%, the specificity 83.36%. CONCLUSION The abnormal expression of renal tissue OPN and NF-κB of the patients with renal staghorn calculi is closely associated with the postoperative renal pelvis infection, which can provide guidance for prevention of postoperative infection.