Abstract
Lateral lumbar interbody fusion (LLIF) is a popular technique as it allows for the placement of a large interbody implant through a retroperitoneal, transpsoas working corridor. Historically, the interbody is placed with the patient in lateral decubitus and then repositioned to prone for the posterior instrumentation. While this has been an effective and successful technique, removing the interoperative flip would improve the efficiency of these cases. This has led to modified LLIF approaches including single-position prone LLIF (pLLIF). This modification has shown to be an efficient and powerful technique; however, learning to navigate the LLIF approach in the prone position has its own challenges. The purpose of this article is to provide a detailed description of our pLLIF technique while simultaneously introducing surgical tips to overcome the challenges of the approach and optimize the implantation of the interbody device.
Footnotes
Funding The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests The authors report no conflicts of interest in this work.
Disclosures Michael McDermott, Michael Rogers, Robert Prior, and Rebecca Michna have nothing to disclose. Alfredo Guiroy is a teacher for AO spine. Jahangir Asghar is a consultant for NuVasive, SeaSpine, Globus, and Medtronic and teaches for Medtronic. Ashish Patel is a consultant for Stryker and NuVasive, receives royalties from NuVasive and ATEC, and has received a grant from NuVasive.
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