The Extreme Lateral Interbody Fusion (XLIF): Its Today and Tomorrow

Copyright: © 2014 He Q. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. The extreme lateral interbody fusion (XLIF) was first introduced by Pimenta in 2001 [1] and developed in 2003. It is a minimally invasive, lateral, transpsoas approach for lumbar interbody fusion and is an alternative approach to anterior lumbar interbody fusion (ALIF) [2]. The XLIF approach minimizes anterior approach related complications such as vascular and visceral injury, without the need for an access surgeon [3], furthermore, it bears the several advantages to this approach, including less tissue dissection, smaller incisions, decreased operative time, blood loss, shorter hospital stay, reduced postoperative pain, enhanced fusion rates, and the ability to place instrumentation through the same incision [4].