[Endoscopic nucleotomy - Renaissance of a procedure. State of the art]

Since the introduction of percutaneous nucleotomy two lines of development have been followed. On the one hand the blindly driven intradiscal tissue active methods and on the other hand endoscopically controlled minimally invasive tissue methods. The first group diminished the acceptance of intradiscal applications due to few reproducible results. Due to high resolution endoscopy with coaxial endoscopes, the second group developed into effective minimally invasive forms of surgery with well defined indications and reproducible results and challenges conventional techniques in the range of intradiscal and extradiscal indications.