MIS Thoracic Interbody Surgery

Abstract

Surgical techniques for reconstruction of the thoracic and thoracolumbar spine have evolved dramatically within the past 15 years [1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 12, 14, 15, 18, 21, 24, 26–29, 34–36, 38–40, 43, 45–50, 52, 54–56, 58]. Traumatic structural damage to the anterior load-bearing spinal column, disc herniation, spinal neoplasm, spondylitis/spondylodiscitis, and posttraumatic deformity represent the most frequent indications for thoracic interbody surgery [1, 2, 7, 9, 10, 12–14, 23–27, 31, 33, 40, 44, 46, 48, 49, 54, 56, 58]. Anterior column reconstruction to treat spinal trauma, metastasis, and inflammatory lesions has gained increasing importance due to the unfavorable results obtained with exclusively posterior approaches [7, 14, 15, 20, 25, 40, 44, 51, 56].