Abstract
The advancement of the percutaneous endoscopic lumbar discectomy (PECD) and its clinical success have led to similar minimally invasive approaches to the cervical spine. The goal of PECD is the decompression of the cervical nerve root through a direct endoscopic visualization, removing the herniated mass and shrinking the nucleous pulposus with the use of microforceps and holmium: yttrium-aluminum-garnet (Ho:YAG) laser. The senior author have performed PECD with cervical laser assisted endoscopy since 1993. The PECD is indicate to patients with constrained or unconstrained soft herniated cervical disc, positive provocative test, and no bony spur larger than 2 mm, regardless of the herniation size. The authors described the surgical technique of PECD and report their 16 years of experience in the endoscopic treatment of the herniated cervical disc.
Highlights
Over the past decade, the percutaneous endoscopic cervical discectomy (PECD) of the lumbar spine has been widely used to treat lumbar soft disc herniation
The PECD should be considered as an alternative to the standard anterior cervical discectomy and fusion, the artificial disc replacement and the posterior microdiscectomy in the treatment of soft cervical disc herniation[5]
After the first description of cervical percutaneous discectomy by Tajima et al.[7], the use of chemonucleolysis with chymopapain[8-10], automated percutaneous cervical discectomy[8-10] and laser percutaneous cervical decompression have been described in the literature[11,12]
Summary
The percutaneous endoscopic cervical discectomy (PECD) of the lumbar spine has been widely used to treat lumbar soft disc herniation. The improvement of this technology and its clinical sucess have led to similar minimally invasive approaches to the cervical spine[1,2,3]. Instruments and equipments Recently, WSH (Korea), in collaboration with Storz (Germany), developed a large working channel endoscope for the cervical spine (Figure 1). According to the senior author’s previous series complain of cervicobrachialgia and lateral localization of the herniated disc are Figure 1 WSH cervical endoscopy set (Karl Storz, Germany). Once inside the center of the disc, the stylet is withdrawn and discography is performed by injecting 1 mL of a mixture (2:1:2 ratio) of radio opaque dye (Telebrix®, Guerbert, France), indigo carmine (Carmine®, Korean United Pharma, Seoul, South Korea) and normal saline is performed to confirm the intradiscal positioning and to stain the nucleus and herniated fragment to achieve contrast with the adjacent tissues (Figure 3)
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
