History of lumbar endoscopic spinal surgery and the intradiskal therapies

In the field of spinal surgery, preservation of normal tissues has become an important issue with understanding human physiology more comprehensively. And the main goal of the latest spinal surgery is neural element decompression and stabilization of spinal motion segments without any normal tissue damage and its negative long-term consequences. To achieve these, many types of surgical technologies have been developed for minimizing their invasiveness. Today, the spectrum of minimally invasive spinal surgery with a percutaneous endoscope is expanded from simple disk operations to include deformity operations. In this chapter, a historical account of percutaneous endoscopic lumbar disk operations is summarized in terms of their technical landmarks.