Endoscopy of the cervical spine traditionally has been slow to adopt.
Initially, spinal endoscopy concentrated on common painful degenerative conditions of
the lumbar spine, for which many of the technology breakthroughs were developed.
Many of them were validated for defined clinical indications, such as a herniated disc.
Stenosis applications followed later as improvements in the endoscopic platform
permitted. Cervical spine application of endoscopic surgery commenced around
interventional pain management with lasers and radiofrequency to improve their
reliability by directly visualizing the painful pathology. Later, anterior cervical
discectomies and posterior cervical foraminotomies were performed as endoscopic
power burrs, and rongeurs made them possible. The most skilled surgeons moved on to
perform anterior and posterior cervical spinal cord decompressions and anterior column
reconstructions endoscopically further to take advantage of the potential of this
platform so they could transform the traditional surgical treatments from inpatient to
outpatient by performing them in a simplified manner in ambulatory surgery centers
where better clinical outcomes and higher patient satisfaction could be achieved. In this
chapter, the authors strove to briefly illustrate this development by giving credit to the most prominent pioneers of this fast-moving field and by setting the stage for what the
reader is about to discover in this most-up-to date publication entitled: Contemporary
Spinal Endoscopy: Cervical Spine.
Keywords: Cervical spine, Decompression, Degeneration, Disc herniation,
Endoscopic, Historical considerations, Impingement, Lasers, Minimally invasive,
Open, Radiofrequency, Stenosis.
