Endoscopic Surgery in Spine Surgery

Abstract

The Japan Orthopedic Association has led the way with endoscopic surgery for the spine and has developed its own training course and technical authorization system. Endoscopic surgery can be classified roughly as an anterior procedure from the pleural or peritoneal cavity or as a posterior procedure from the posterior interlaminar space in spine endoscopic surgeries. A representative technique of the endoscopic posterior spine surgery, which uses the posterior method, is microendoscopic discectomy (MED). While MED was initially utilized for lumbar herniotomy, it has recently been used for lumbar spinal canal stenosis and cervical spine disease. Therefore, all the posterior operative procedures are generally used with an MED system and they are referred to as MED. Thus, MED accounts for 98.7% of spine endoscopic operations performed in Japan (2006). There is little soft tissue damage with this approach and the lamina can be reached between the muscles for lumbar disc herniation. In the MED, radiographic control is indispensable for localization of the tube retractor, and it is necessary to resect the yellow ligament little by little to divide the superficial layer and the deep layer. MED is superior in visual safety for retraction of the nerve root to herniotomy. As for issues with MED, there is a substantial learning curve, the operation requires a long time, expensive instrumentation, there is the lack of haploscopic vision, the visual field to operate is limited, there is a tendency to become disoriented, and the lack of sensation of palpating an organ. Additional approaches include video-assisted thoracoscopic spine surgery (VATS) and endoscopic anterior lumbar spine surgery via the peritoneal or retroperitoneal cavity, but they do not lead to global operations.