Is Microscopic surgery the same as minimally invasive surgery?
Although the names sound similar they are in fact two totally different things. One of our physicians was very surprised when a surgeon that he was working with years ago made a 3 inch incision in the neck for what was termed “cervical spine microscopic surgery”. When he questioned the surgeon about the description of the surgery, her response was,” it is microsurgery because I am using the microscope.” The reality is that with microsurgery the size of the operation is unimportant, it simply implies that at some point during the procedure a microscope was used and thus the surgeon could bill for the use of the microscope. These are not little microscopes, a surgical microscope is about 6 feet high and weighs a ton. This is one of the reasons we are pushing new terms such as Microspine surgery, endoscopic spine surgery and minimally invasive spinal surgery which are more descriptive but still not perfect. Nonetheless, the literature has defined minimally invasive spinal surgery as havin
