'We make a skin incision, and this camera goes in here … and, voila,' says surgeon of innovative surgery technique

Alberta Health Services is touting a new, minimally invasive spinal surgery that has slashed recovery times from months to hours, allowing doctors to perform complex medical procedures without having to carve large incisions and inflict trauma on their patients.

The new procedure features endoscopic technology, which doctors use to send a thin, cylindrical instrument through a seven-millimetre incision — the size of a pencil — to precisely scoop out herniated discs from the spinal canal with the help of a camera.

“In traditional surgery, this would be open, would be bloody, you’re using large instruments to do the surgery,” said Dr. Michael Yang, spinal neurosurgeon at Foothills Medical Centre, who led a program at the hospital for this new technology.

“Now we’re able to do it under constant saline irrigation and then remove (the discs) ultra minimally and basically, and what’s even better compared to open surgery, is that … with the camera, we’re able to sneak in now to actually directly visualize everything.”

Seeded by the Calgary Health Foundation with $8.2 million, the program focuses on two procedures: endoscopic spine surgery and lumbar fusion. The former is when a team of doctors remove tissues pinching the spinal nerve. The latter involves installing screws and rods in the lumbar vertebrae to stabilize the spine.

The surgeries are used to treat a number of conditions, including spondylolisthesis and myelopathy.

Endoscopic technology in both of these procedures prevents doctors from having to extract healthy bone to find the tissue.

“We don’t have to remove any soft tissue or disrupt any muscle,” Yang said. “We make a skin incision, and this camera goes in here, into the space, and, voila, we see the disc herniation, and we’re able to take out the disc herniation or compression, to relieve the pressure off the nerves.”

The program was launched in 2025 after Yang found a gap in spinal surgeries. He was exposed to this technique at the University of Miami during his residency in 2021. Such procedures are common in the U.S. and when Yang discovered their benefits, he strove to bring the technology to Calgary, now one of a handful of cities boasting this procedure.

While the surgery is approved by the FDA, it hasn’t been signed off by Health Canada. It’s why Yang has to seek the agency’s approval for every surgery.

Dale Bingham, a resident of Red Deer, is one of the first few patients to try this new procedure.

“I said, ‘Let’s do it,’ ” he said. “I had no qualms at all. I was more nervous today than I was going in for my operation. ”

Bingham, who worked as a copper cable splicer, suffered from a condition in which a nerve tissue squeezed into his spinal cord, causing him immense pain until he was on a heavy dose of painkillers. He was able to walk within two hours of the procedure.

“Throughout the surgery, my legs were sore, but my back was never sore,” he said. A video clip shows him hobbling after the surgery. Yang said patients spend days in the hospital due to the pain and are unable to walk for long. Now the procedure has cut the average time a patient spends at the hospital post-surgery to between four and six hours, freeing up space in acute care.

“I got up from that with zero back pain, zero leg pain,” he said. “I just felt so good and so apt.”

So far, the hospital has performed about 100 endoscopic spinal surgeries and five lumbar fusion procedures. Yang said Canada has a long road ahead in advancing these techniques, but if enough patients ask for it, doctors would care enough to learn the skills required to perform such surgeries.

“There is no incentive for surgeons to learn innovative techniques like this, because the wait list is two years to see a spine surgeon,” he said.

“When they see a spine surgeon, they’re like, ‘God,’ whatever they say, they will agree, because they’re in so much pain. So there’s no motivation for them to learn, take time out of their day, spend a couple of months to learn this technique, right?

“But my hope is that with education … patients start to ask for this technique, and if more patients ask for this, then maybe the surgeon would be like ‘OK, maybe I should take a look at this technology. Maybe I should spend the effort to learn this technique.’ ”

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