Thoracoscopic Management of Spinal Trauma

After the adventure endoscopic surgery and usage for the management of lung based pathologies, it is carried to the endoscopic approaches of thoracal spine pathologies (1,2). The major advantages of endoscopic surgery is the elimination of thoracotomy. For this reason, the patient does not cause to the thoracotomy pain which is one of the main source of the pain after surgery. The surgical approach is maintained with two trocars on the thorax. Generally, there are two kinds of traumatic processes. The first is the new fractures at the vertebrae or dislocation. The second is the osteoporotic fractures. Because of the easy seperation of mosaic like bone pieces at the vertebrae fractures of new trauma, they can be excised easily with endoscopic approach. The spinal canal can be decompressed easily with this method. The alignment of vertebrae at the disclocation can be maintained via posterior approach instrumentation. If the fracture line accross the disc level, the bone graft is inserted after discectomy. The first choice is vertebroplasty or kyphoplasty at the osteoporotic fractures. However, surgical approach can be necessary for the total collapsed or sticked upper and lower endplate cases.