Endoscopic Spine Surgery is state-of–the-art, extremely minimally invasive spine surgery for the treatment of back pain, leg pain, numbness and weakness, bone spurs, bulging discs, stenosis, herniated disc, facet joint disease, sciatica, scoliosis, spondylolisthesis and more.
This procedure allows a tube the size of a pencil to be inserted into the spine through an incision the size of a fingernail. The muscles are not cut or torn but pushed to the side to allow this small tube to enter the spine. From there we use a “High-def” camera to see into the spine to remove disks, bone spurs, ligaments and cut pain nerves under direct view. Some patients will have immediate pain relief.
For example, a herniated disk pinches the sciatic nerve causing back and leg pain called sciatica. This burning, stabbing pain can be very debilitating to the person. Traditional spine surgery, important stabilizing spinal muscles are cut or stretched. This is decreased with Minimally Invasive Spine Surgery (MISS). Bone and ligament are then cut away to expose the nerves increasing risk of scar tissue. The nerve sac is then pulled to the side and the disc is removed to “unpinch” the nerve. The endoscopic technique bypasses all of the above — we take advantage of an opening that already exists in the side of the spine called the neuroforamen. Very often we’ll enlarge that opening by only a few millimeters to make even more room for the nerve and then remove the ruptured disc without taking the spine apart.