Türk Nöroşirürji Dergisi 2012 , Vol 22 , Num 2
Minimally Invasive Lateral Transthoracic Approach for Thoracic Disc Herniation: Surgical Technique and Comparison with Other Available Approaches
Osman Arıkan NACAR2, Mustafa Onur ULU1, Murat PEKMEZCİ3, Vedat DEVİREN3
1İstanbul Üniversitesi, Cerrahpaşa Tıp Fakültesi, Nöroşirürji Anabilim Dalı, İstanbul, Türkiye
2Kalifornia San Francisco Üniversitesi (UCSF), Nöroşirürji Anabilim Dalı, San Francisco, ABD
3Kalifornia San Francisco Üniversitesi (UCSF), Ortopedi Anabilim Dalı, Omurga Cerrahisi Merkezi, San Francisco, ABD
Thoracic disc disease is one of the most challenging clinical entities to diagnose and to treat among spinal pathologies, mainly due to its infrequency, lack of a characteristic symptomatology and the specific features of the thoracic anatomy. Clinical symptoms and signs may be caused by either local mechanical effects due to disc degeneration causing axial pain, compression of the spinal cord causing myelopathy or compression of the thoracic nerve root with radiculopathy or any of the above in combination. Up to now, the search of surgeons for the techniques providing maximal decompression with minimal invasiveness have led a number of surgical approaches available for the treatment of thoracic disc herniation. The surgical approaches available can be summarized as posterolateral, lateral, anterior and thoracoscopic techniques. In this manuscript the authors review the minimally invasive lateral transthoracic approach, a recently described technique for the surgical treatment of thoracal disc herniations. A detailed description of this technique along with its comparison with other approaches is discussed. Anahtar Kelimeler : Epidemiology, Lateral transthoracic approach, Surgical treatment, Thoracic disc herniation