Minimally invasive cervical spine surgery

Revolutionary minimally invasive spine surgery

In case of limb surgery, doctors have performed surgery for many decades by entering between adjacent muscles to reach the bone without damaging the muscles and important neurohemal organs, however, posterior cervical surgery does not have such tradition and all the muscles are still removed from the cervical bone.

Soon after I became an independent spinal surgeon, I was distressed by a large number of patients who suffered over a long period from the after effects such as neck, shoulder and back pains, a stiff neck with difficulty in moving, or a forward head with difficulty in looking forward after spinal surgery. At the same time, I figured out the cause was from large damage to the neck muscles due to the surgery. Historically, spiral surgery should have separated all the muscles of the back of the neck from the bone. In order to solve the problem, a new neck operation technique, which would not damage the muscles, had to be developed. Since then, I had spent years staring at anatomical texts and spine models. One day, I could understand “Between muscles, everyone has a space.” In 1999, the first in spine surgery history, I developed minimally invasive spine surgery which is groundbreaking operation to just make a space between adjacent muscles without damaging the muscles.

Since then, I give lectures and technical instructions in various countries such as the U.S., Europe and Asia and have strived to provide as many patients as possible with less painful surgery without affecting neck function.

This is called the “Shiraishi’s muscle-sparing technique” in the world and has been widely known as a new standard for spine surgery.