Perioperative aspects of endoscopic anterior scoliosis surgery: the learning curve for a consecutive series of 100 patients.

The reported benefits of endoscopic versus open scoliosis surgery include improved visualization, a muscle sparing approach, reduced pulmonary morbidity, reduced pain, and improved cosmesis. Some aspects of the surgical learning curve for this technically demanding method have been previously reported; however, improvements in other factors with increasing experience have not been quantified. This paper presents a series of 100 consecutive endoscopic anterior scoliosis corrections performed between April 2000 and February 2006. We report changes in the following perioperative factors with increasing experience; operative set-up time, operative time, x-ray irradiation time, number of instrumented levels, blood loss, intercostal catheter drainage, chest drain removal time, days in intensive care, days to mobilize, days in hospital, and early complications. Statistical comparisons were made between the first 20 (1 to 20), middle 20 (41 to 60), and last 20 (81 to 100) cases. Results showed statistically significant improvements and increased consistency in operative time, operative set-up time, x-ray irradiation time, blood loss, hospital stay, and mobilization time with experience. The complication rate was comparable to other recently published endoscopic studies. In the last 20 cases of the series, operative times had reduced to 35 minutes per level, x-ray irradiation times to 15 seconds per level, and blood loss to 38 mL per level. Most perioperative surgical factors therefore improve significantly with increasing experience in endoscopic anterior scoliosis correction.