Minimally invasive spine surgery has risen in prominence and offers an alternative to open procedures. But findings about its economic benefits aren’t entirely conclusive, according to an article in the Fall 2025 issue of Vertebral Columns.
Eight things to know:
1. Spine surgery costs can be highly variable with a range from $8,286 to $120,394. Cost drivers include implants, facility costs, hospitalization and surgeon compensation. More complex cases and complications can increase those costs.
2. Minimally invasive surgery can reduce costs with outpatient procedures, reduced medical and hardware complications and decreased narcotics use. Technologies including robotics can also improve outcomes.
3. Savings and costs in minimally invasive surgery vary by procedure, the article said. Multilevel spinal fusions and deformity corrections have longer operation times and more hardware requirements compared to single-level fusions and simple decompression. High upfront investments may offset early savings with minimally invasive spine surgery.
4. The learning curve for minimally invasive spine surgery is short (20 to 40 cases for nondeformity cases), and high procedural volumes can help dilute expenses.
5. Cost-effectiveness and cost-utility analyses can help researchers evaluate minimally invasive spine value, but the models aren’t without limitations. While they measure costs and benefits by the numbers they don’t “capture all value judgements.”
6. Long-term outcomes, out-of-pocket costs, complication risks and surgeon recommendation are the most important factors in choosing minimally invasive surgery, the article said. Patient-centered studies should focus on long-term and quality-of-life measures.
7. In the short term, minimally invasive spine surgeries for acute care are lower than traditional open surgeries, the article said. Long term costs have more variable clinical outcomes.
8. The article concluded that “While short-term evidence consistently supports cost savings and faster recovery, long-term data remain limited and heterogeneous. Future standardized economic evaluations should adopt rigorous methodologies that integrate multiple stakeholder perspectives, as well as capture long-term differences in economic value between MIS and open surgery across procedure types with distinct cost-benefit profiles.”
