Neurosurgery versus orthopedic surgery: Who has better access to minimally invasive spinal technology?

Our aim was to evaluate differences in neurosurgeons versus orthopedists access to technologies needed to perform minimally invasive spine surgeries (MISS) in Latin America.

We sent a survey to members of AO Spine Latin America (January 2020), and assessed the following variables; nationality, level of hospital (primary, secondary, and tertiary), number of spinal operations performed per year, spinal pathologies addressed, the number of minimally invasive spine operations performed/year, and differences in access to MISS spinal technology between neurosurgeons and orthopedists.

Responses were returned from 306 (25.6) members of AO Spine Latin America representing 20 different countries; 57.8% of respondents were orthopedic surgeons and 42.4% had over 10 years of experience. Although both specialties reported a lack of access to most of the technologies, the main difference between the two was greater utilization/access of neurosurgeons to operating microscope (e.g., 84% of the neurosurgeons vs. 39% of orthopedic spine surgeons).

Although both specialties have limited access to MISS spinal technologies, orthopedic spine surgeons reported significantly lower access to operating microscopes versus neurosurgeons (P < 0.01).