Spinal surgery and neurosurgeon: quo vadis?

The aim of this review was to point out some critical points in spinal surgery. We present a good idea dealing with the subspecialisation in neurosurgery. Spine surgery is a good and especially timely example for it. The technical progress in the discipline of spinal surgery since the catalytic advances of diagnostic imaging, our understanding of spinal biomechanics and bone growth physiology, and the development of spinal fixation instrumentation have allowed exponential growth in this field. As a result, there is an increasing interest in spinal surgery. In this paper, a Medline review of the literature was performed from 2000 to the present regarding spinal surgery. Today, there is an emerging field of "spine surgery" that incorporates both neurosurgery and orthopedic surgery. In the future, it is possible that there may be a well-defined medical specialty of "spine specialists" defined by its own board certification. This is not currently the case. In this paper, it was concluded that productive collegiality between neurosurgeon and orthopedic surgeon is necessary for the advancement of spine care. This could be to build an own specialisation of spinal surgery. But for that this speciality needs his own and common research, not a part done by neurosurgeons and one by orthopedic surgeons.