Surgical treatment of benign tumors of the spine when required is still
aggressive compared to the lack of malignancy of the underlying disease process.
While such lesions rarely cause systemic problems, grow slowly, and rarely degenerate
into the malignant lesions or metastasize, their open surgical treatment rivals that done
for malignant lesions causing tremendous exposure-related collateral damage from
tissue dissections, blood loss, and scarring of the surgical corridor. Endoscopic spinal
surgery techniques offer an attractive alternative to gain access and visualize areas deep
to the spine that ordinarily would require complicated anterior, posterior, or even
combined approaches to decompress and stabilize iatrogenic instability. In this chapter,
the authors present an exemplary case of applying endoscopy to treating benign nerve
sheath tumors of the lumbar spine – a schwannoma.
Keywords: Benign tumor, Endoscopic decompression, Lumbar nerve compression.
