Surgical treatment of thoracic disc herniation

Symptomatic thoracic disc herniation is estimated on 1 person per million per year. 70% of all thoracic disc herniation cases are asymptomatic. This condition is often undiagnosed in regard to misguided clinical manifestations. Surgical treatment of symptomatic thoracic disc herniation is major challenge for spine surgeons because of the fact that thoracic spine has special anatomical conditions. Historically, posterior approach with laminectomy was treatment by choice, but this method was abandoned for some time, because of the high risk of postoperative complications. During last years we observe development of new approaches and advanced techniques e.g. microsurgical pedicle-sparing transfacet approach, costotransversectomy, extracavitary approach, minimal invasive thoracoscopic or endoscopic discectomy, but posterior approach is still broadly applied.