Rooting, and growing with luxuriant branches and leaves-the story of oblique lateral interbody fusion in China

Oblique lateral interbody fusion (OLIF) is a popular minimally invasive lumbar fusion technique in the world, which has become an important technique for lumbar interbody fusion. In 2014, OLIF was firstly introduced into the mainland of China, however, due to some defects of OLIF technique, such as steep learning curve, high rates of early complications, and difficult surgical exposure approach, the initial development of OLIF in China was not smooth. In order to make OLIF simpler and safer, the domestic scholars designed special exposure retractors for OLIF, and put forward a new technique for OLIF, called anteroin-ferior psoas exposure technique under direct vision. Driven by the OLIF technique trainings, live operation demonstrations, and literature publications, et al., the OLIF technique begun to settle down and flourish in China. Up to now, the number of surgical cases of Medtronic OLIF25 has reached more than 6 000, and the domestic scholars have published more than 30 OLIF papers in the international journals. However, our domestic spine surgeons still need to pay attention to the standardized application of OLIF, appropriate OLIF devices according to the Chinese anatomical characteristics, and the multicenter randomized controlled study of large samples, et al.