I've seen XLIF presented at the conferences for several years. Back in June 2005 at IITS in San Diego, Nuvasive presented XLIF in great detail in a hands-on session that was very informative and interesting. Keep in mind that XLIF is more of an approach... a 'less invasive' way to implant the same set of interbody devices. AXIALIF is a hardware system and a new type of fusion. Discectomy is accomplished blind through the sacrum. There are a lot of questions that must be answered. I appreciate that 'the rod can always be removed'. That kind of reminds me of what we used to say in the early days of ADR. "no problem... if you do ADR and if fails, you can pop it out and still fuse... you haven't burned any bridges." Comforting words, in theory. Not very comforting words in practice.
Mark
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