Lower lumbar anterior discectomy without fusion: a several year follow-up indicating usefulness of this technique in surgery of the lower lumbar spine--a report of one hundred ten cases.

For the surgical treatment of lumbar disc lesions, the posterior approach has often been used. It is not always easy to get good results, because one has to go through the spinal canal with irritation of the dura and the nerve root and cause bleeding. If the correct diagnosis is made by myelography or other methods, it is more logical to remove the disc from the front without disturbing the spinal canal. Under this idea, anterior discectomy has been performed on 110 patients suffering from low back pain and sciatica. The excellent results were obtained in 90.9 per cent.