J Korean Neurosurg Soc.  1994 Sep;23(9):1012-1018.

Microsurgery for Lumbar Disc Disease

• Park CK

Abstract

The management for herniated lumbar disc has been improved steadily since the standard discectomy was introduced at the early stage of this century. The therapeutic use of standard discetomy has been critisized by some investigators because of its incasiveness and potential postoperative sequele. Recently various non-invasive mean were developed, however there are still some disadvantages with them such as high cost and thire limitation of disc removal. In the present study fifty-nine cases managed with microsurgical discetomy were presented, all performed by one surgeon and analysed by the other. The operative results, assessed 6 months postoperatively, showed that the microdiscecetomy was of good quality, comparable to the results of the standard discectomy reported by others. Patients have discharged early(less than 10 days) and returned to their usual activities quickly(less than 3 weeks). The advantage of this technique is its capacity to preserve better integrity of normal tissue and to impose less trauma on the body. Furthermore it may be more cost-effective than any other surgical managements available. It can be concluded that microsurgical discectomy represents one of the best refinements of standard discectomy even if it has also some negative points.

Keyword

Herniated lumbar disc; Microsurgery; Lumbar discectomy

MeSH Terms

Diskectomy
Humans
Microsurgery*
Research Personnel