• Hyeun Sung Kim, Pang Hung Wu, and Il-Tae Jang.
• Department of Spine Surgery, Nanoori Gangnam Hospital, Seoul, Republic of South Korea. Electronic address: neurospinekim@gmail.com.
• World Neurosurg. 2020 Aug 1; 140: 642-653.

AbstractThe aging population around the world leads to increasing incidence of degenerative spinal conditions. There is a need for a minimally invasive technique in treatment for spinal conditions to meet the medical complexity and comorbidities that comes with aging. Principles of endoscopy are similar to minimally invasive surgery, which is to decrease pressure on soft tissue crushing from prolonged retraction, avoid soft tissue stripping and dissection, and bone and ligamentous preservation for optimal decompression without excessive destruction. Endoscopic spine surgery techniques started slowly in development in the 1970s to 2000s, with a rapid phase of development since the turn of the 21st century with endoscopic solutions developing in cervical, thoracic, and lumbar conditions with increasing complexity in nature of operation. Technological enhancement with progressively supportive literature is pushing boundaries of endoscopy from the early days of soft tissue procedure to current fusion procedures, endoscopic spine surgery techniques is covering more areas of spine than ever previously possible with good clinical results. We present a review on the current techniques available and postulated near future development for endoscopic spine surgery.Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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