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Dr. Choll Kim
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VIDEO: Dr. Kim – Minimally Invasive Spine Surgery, Can It Be Used To Treat All Spinal Injuries?

Dr. Kim shares when minimally invasive spine surgery can be used to treat spinal injuries.

Dr. Kim:
The use of minimally invasive spine surgery for various conditions five years ago was very limited, but every year we get better at identifying problems that we can treat. We get better technologically, and our skill set is improving.

So five years ago there was maybe 25 percent of my patients were treated MIS. Then after every year that’s gone by more and more patients are treated with minimally invasive surgery, and today, I would say that virtually all of my surgeries have some type of minimally invasive surgical treatment, and the important thing about that is that it’s nice to be able to treat a small, simple problem with minimally invasive surgery, but the difference between the traditional open surgery and minimally invasive surgery for small problems is not that big of a deal.

Once you start having bigger and bigger, more severe problems and more frail patients, the proposition of doing a standard open procedure on those patients can be daunting. There’s a lot of potential risk, and so it’s even more important to do minimally invasive surgery on the complicated patients. And really what we are able to do at this institution that probably is difficult for most places to do is to take care of those patients. Those are the patients that really need the minimally invasive strategy over the open traditional approach.

About Dr. Kim, M.D.:
Dr. Choll Kim graduated cum laude from Harvard Medical School and completed his fellowship training in complex spine surgery at the Mayo Clinic. He is board certified by American Board of Orthopaedic Surgeons.

Dr. Kim is a nationally known expert in the modern field of computer-assisted minimally invasive spine surgery. He has trained specialists throughout the country on the safe and effective application of state-of-the-art techniques using image guidance and navigation technologies.

For More Information On Back Conditions And The Advanced Spine Institute Visit Advanced Spine Institute & Minimally Invasive Spine Center At Alvarado Hospital.

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