What is minimally invasive spine surgery and when can it be performed?
Minimally invasive spine surgery is surgery that allows access to the surgical target through a very small incision, either one or several orifices in the patient’s back. Through this technique we are able to correct the defect presented by the case, through a technique that minimally disrupts the patient’s anatomy. The old slogan, bad surgeons make big mistakes through small incisions, is outdated because this technique allows us to solve almost all spinal problems through an intervention that accesses the patient through a small hole, or several.
What types of spinal surgery are there?
Minimally invasive surgery can be used in both instrumentation and non-instrumentation techniques, that is, the technique where titanium screws and rods, or any prosthetic element, will be used to solve the problem, or a simple decompressive technique, without any type of instrumentation. Minimally invasive means accessing the surgical objective through a very small incision or several holes made in the patient’s back, neck or lumbar region.
What are the advantages of this technique?
The advantages of minimally invasive spine surgery are innumerable. In principle, by minimizing surgical access through a small incision, we achieve a much shorter postoperative recovery. The patient can walk immediately after surgery or mobilize without any type of restriction and is discharged from the hospital in a matter of one or two days. Often even on the same day, if we have operated in the morning, the patient can go home in the afternoon. Another advantage of minimally invasive surgery is that it minimizes all the surgical risks involved in spinal surgery, whether in the neck, thoracic or lumbar spine. The patient will receive minimal bodily aggression, which speeds up the recovery process and minimizes the operative risk.
What are the results like?
If we talk about the results of the minimally invasive surgical technique, we are talking about a wide range of advantages. In principle, as we mentioned above, the hospital stay is considerably shortened instead of convalescing for several days, there are many patients who are discharged the same day of the intervention. Most cases usually go home in two or three days at the most and mobilization begins on the same day of surgery, just after the operation. Another advantage of the minimally invasive technique is the absence of excessive postoperative pain. In the traditional techniques, where we performed open surgery, as it used to be called, we had a slow and certainly painful recovery due to the architectural disruption of the anatomical tissues. In these cases, since tiny access techniques are used, the pain is almost completely reduced. In terms of functional recovery, there is also an acceleration of the patient’s return, or return to daily activity. We encourage patients who undergo surgery to mobilize the same afternoon of the intervention and return to a low performance sporting activity in less than a week. All this is achieved through minimal aggression to the anatomical structures involved and the recovery of functionality almost immediately after the procedure. Likewise, the reviews by the Neurosurgery specialist that we do at one week, 3 weeks and 6 weeks, we have verified that a high number of patients have resumed medium and high performance sports activities without any problem. This includes contact sports and endurance sports, including continuous running and high performance cycling.