Current status of minimally invasive spine treatment in Germany

  Thanks to a grant from the Beijing High-Level Talent Fund, I had the privilege of traveling to Germany for six weeks to study and learn about the current status and progress of minimally invasive spine treatment. If the six-month minimally invasive spine study in the United States in 2011 opened my eyes to the fact that there are so many advanced techniques to treat common everyday cases, then in Germany I was obviously approaching each case with a critical eye and analyzing the advantages and disadvantages of its treatment plan. But to my surprise, apart from the excellent and advanced surgical instruments, I was impressed by the German treatment philosophy and surgical rigor. Six months before I came to Germany, I started researching and selecting two of the most unique orthopedic hospitals. One is a spine surgery hospital in Munich, southern Germany, with an international spine master, Professor Mayer, surgery is mainly complex, rework; and the other is located in the small town of St-Anna hospital in northeastern Germany, the inventor of the spine endoscope, to endoscopic minimally invasive, but what I did not expect is that this hospital is located in a small town, orthopedics annual surgery volume of more than 10,000 cases, not counting the operating room The same spine surgeons perform minimally invasive imaging, injections, nerve blocks and other procedures under local anesthesia (80-120 cases per day, more than 20,000 cases per year), leaving me to ask many times how it is possible to have so many patients and why doctors have the time to do so many surgeries and operations. Like in the United States, the streets in Germany are also sparsely populated in the middle of the day, but the hospital parking lot is full by 7:00 a.m. Every morning at 7:00 a.m., the doctors are already in the conference room discussing the cases, while the anesthesia has already started and the first surgery has been performed at 7:30 a.m. It is hard to imagine that five minimally invasive spine surgeries under general anesthesia were completed in one operating room before 12:00 a.m. This involves skillful anesthesia, patient turnaround, operator skill, and perioperative management, all of which seem ordinary to them, as they go on and on every day. It is clear that doctors are one of the busiest professions in other countries as well.  How can I use what I have seen and learned to serve my countrymen? My feeling is that the first thing is to have the concept of loving the injury, that is, to love the patient, and to use what you have learned to treat the patient with the least trauma, least cost, and fastest recovery, but of course, this is all based on the doctor’s skills and the concept of loving the injury. I always wonder how much less patients would suffer and how much less money would be spent if these minimally invasive techniques could be applied to treat the country’s population. Although the medical environment in China is not satisfactory and patients have different needs and desires, many doubts between doctors and patients can be solved if they are clearly informed.