1 History of Endoscopic Spine Surgery

Abstract

As the understanding of human physiology has become more complete, the importance of preserving normal tissues has become increasingly clear in the fi eld of surgery. This understanding gave birth to the concept of minimally invasive surgery that has conquered almost all surgical fi elds, including spine surgery. With recent advances and experience, minimally invasive spinal surgery (MISS) is gradually replacing conventional spine surgical procedures. The primary goal of MISS is to achieve outcomes comparable to those of open surgery while minimizing normal tissue damage and reducing recovery times. Advances in optics, radionavigation, and laser technology made MISS more accessible to surgeons and truly less invasive for the patient.Minimally invasive surgical techniques have touched the entire spinal column, from the cervical to the lumbosacral spine. The MISS spectrum ranges from simple disk surgeries to the most complicated spine surgeries, such as deformity correction. Of all MISS procedures, percutaneous endoscopic disk surgery has attracted the most attention from the global spine surgery community and has enjoyed phenomenal advances in sophistication in the past decade. The remainder of the chapter presents a historical account of percutaneous disk surgeries for the lumbar and cervical spine.