The Role and Future of Endoscopic Spine Surgery will steadily evolve as surgeons gain confidence and experience operating on their patients under local anesthesia .
This experience will provide a “new” concept of evidence based medicine by treating the pain and symptom generator rather than just the imaging.
Anthony T. Yeung M.D., has reported his 5-10-year results in a preliminary review of endoscopic transforaminal of isthmic and degenerative spondylolisthesis decompression causing sciatica and back pain at international spine meetings. Fifty-five patients from January 2002-December 2012 served as the database for the clinical presentation in patients who specifically chose to stage Yeung’s endoscopic transforaminal decompressive procedure over fusion. The patients were specifically evaluated for endoscopic spine surgery in a shared clinical decision.
This more focused article is subdivided with stratified indications to degenerative spondylolisthesis only, omitting isthmic spondylolisthesis since isthmic spondylolisthesis is traditionally the surgical option of choice for patients who elected to undergo surgical intervention as the standard surgical option versus continuing with non-surgical care. Disc protrusions associated with degenerative spondylolisthesis, disc herniation, patients with concomitant stenosis, who did well with the first study on both degenerative and isthmic spondylolisthesis were analyzed from the first database and stratified for degenerative spondylolisthesis.
Abstract
In the United States and in industrialized countries, new procedures for back pain tend to “follow the money” aided by industry. In Asian and OUS countries, there is more acceptance of traditional non-surgical treatment from thousands of years of medical treatment history. New and non-traditional treatments based on evolving science, are being made readily available in the information highway by Open Access Journals where researchers can publish their Level V evidence-based concepts for interested parties and other scientists.
Anthony T. Yeung’s work focuses on the surgical treatment of the pain generator in the lumbar spine. Patient selection is aided by using diagnostic and therapeutic injections, to identify the likelihood of surgical success when the pain source is targeted. This article focuses on the details of Yeung’s 27 years’ experience on identifying and treating the pain generators in the lumbar spine by an endoscope and combined with an endoscopic system that he has trademarked the Yeung Endoscopic Spine System (YESS™).
Abstract
Endoscopic spine surgeons bridge the major gap between fusion-oriented spinal surgeons and pain management physicians. Current surgical philosophy by traditionally trained spinal surgeons focuses on decompression with or without fusion as the “ultimate cure” for a painful spinal segment, while pain management uses spinal injections and techniques such as peripheral nerve and spinal cord neuro-modulation to relieve pain. Endoscopic surgery is the least invasive of current minimally invasive surgical options-focuses on treating the patho-anatomy of the pain generator. This represents a path between traditional open decompression with or without fusion and the more temporary techniques of pain management.
Abstract
Current surgical philosophy by traditionally trained spinal surgeons focuses on decompression with or without fusion as the “ultimate cure” for a painful spinal segment. Endoscopic surgery-the least invasive of current minimally invasive surgical options—focuses on treating the patho-anatomy of the pain generator. Spondylolisthesis is traditionally represented as a “gold standard” for fusion, but with minimally invasive techniques evolving, there is a new path between traditional open decompression and fusion that offers an alternative. A review of a database of patients who refused fusion, but opting to an endoscopic decompression with sciatica, even in the face of back pain determined that transforaminal decompression for a disc herniation or foraminal stenosis is effective in some patients and result in a decrease in the need for fusion.
The endoscopic transforaminal decompression technique is discussed as a stand-alone or staged procedure that may reduce the number of surgical fusions in the face of degenerative and isthmic spondylolisthesis. When combined with surgical rhizotomy for low back pain, this hybrid procedure includes rhizolysis for posterior column back pain, may offer a cost-effective method for treating common debilitating chronic low back pain.
