ENDOSCOPIC (KEYHOLE) SPINE SURGERY
Finally endoscopic spine surgery has come to Melbourne and after years of training, I have had the opportunity to provide my services to patients with great success, from the beginning of this year.
Endoscopic surgery is performed through tiny incisions in the back that measure about 8-10 mm to achieve results that have been traditionally achieved through 30 to 80mm incisions in the past. This also has the benefit of preservation of the paraspinal muscles that are denervated and devascularized through traditional spine surgery. This results in quicker recovery and shorter hospital stays.
Mr. Ivan Bhaskar is One of the first Neurosurgeons to introduce Keyhole/Endoscopic spine surgery” and is available at Mulgrave Hospital and Northpark Private Hospital.
What exactly is endoscopic spine surgery?
This highly specialised surgical approach enables surgeons to treat spinal conditions through a tiny incision that is less than a centimetre whereas similar operations are being done by a vast majority of surgeons in Australia, through incisions that are more than 4 times the size of keyhole surgical incisions. The advantages, besides a small cut, are minimal disruption of muscles and ligaments that support the spine thus mitigating resultant back pain that can arise from that and quicker post-operative recovery. This approach also prevents or postpones need for a fusion operation although in certain cases a fusion operation is unavoidable. This also has significantly reduced rates of complications such as bleeding and infection.
With Endoscopic spine surgeries, patients tend to be discharged from hospital on the day of surgery or the day after instead of spending days in the hospital. Post-operative recovery is also significantly quicker. Patient’s life returns to normal in days to weeks rather than weeks to months. Return to work is also similarly quicker than with conventional surgical approaches.
Unfortunately, very few surgeons have the necessary training for this and are capable of performing endoscopic surgeries and few among them are experienced enough, one of them fortunately being myself. In the next few years, there will be hopefully many surgeons who would train adequately and adopt this approach that has been widely practised in many parts of the world for the last 30 years yielding far better results than conventional surgical approaches. I hope that we don’t lose our Australian community to other parts of the world from now on. Given that we have had a few overseas patients coming into Australia for this kind of surgery, Melbourne could become a leading provider of state of the art endoscopic spine services.
The following pictures show the size of incisions compared to a similar surgery performed previously.
