The advantages of percutaneous spine surgery
The evolution of spine surgery over the last decade has seen the ugly cousin of medicine come into the fold of compassionate care. Prior to the advances in technique and technology the performace of sspine surgery had a rather ominous reputation with the majority of patients having poor outcomes due to the overly aggressive nature of the surgery which involved the destruction of the muscles, bones and ligaments of the back. This collateral damage quite often left the patientin a worse state than before the surgery and as word spread more and more patients were reluctant to undergo any spinal procedure choosing instead to liv with the pain.
Th inspiration for the commencement of the evolution of percutaneous spine surgery came from the arthroscopic techniques used to treat diseased knees and the reasoning was that if the knee joints could be visualiseda and treated with minimal incisions then why could this same technology not be modified to treat the spine. Parviz Kambin was the first physician in the USto recognise thois opportunity and so began his journey on the road towards the perfection of the minimally invasive technique.
It soon became very clear that there were many advantages to the percutaneous approach which included the following:
less blood loss
lower incidence of infection
shorter time to discharge
lower cost
less post operative pain
quicker return to normal function
As the fieldmof spine care evolves over thenext ten years the trends of the last ten will continue as the devices and modalities of treatment progress towatsd an increasingly minimally invasive basis. Patients will be more likely to seek treatment at earlier points in their degenerative cascade and the rate of fusion operations will probably decline.
