The minimally invasive lateral transpsoas approach to the lumbar spine has been one of the most important advances for spine surgery and over the past years has been progressively well known and developed. In contrast to the more traditional anterior lumbar interbody fusion methods, the lateral technique accesses the disc laterally through the psoas muscle and has showed to offer adequate access to the disc space with the added reduction of surgery exposure, though with perioperative morbidity. First developed for anterior based discectomy and interbody grafting in simple degenerative diseases, this access has recently gained field for more complex indications, such as thoracic pathologies, motion preservation, and deformity surgery.

The first article report on this technique was in 2006 in the literature on lateral access currently in expansion regarding both number and complexity, along with the fact that more and more surgeons worldwide are getting experience with the technique. With indexes in PubMed database, we have been able to find articles from different territories, such as Brazil, USA, Italy, Czech Republic, Japan, China, and France. The lateral approach has been a theme for podium presentations in several society meetings, including World Federation of Neurosurgical Societies (WFNS), The International Society for the Advancement of Spine Surgery (ISASS), The Spine Society of Europe (EuroSpine), Scoliosis Research Society (SRS), North American Spine Society (NASS), and American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS).

The objective of this special issue is, for the first time in the literature, to gather articles on lateral based spine surgery and assemble unique and high-quality peer-reviewed publishings. Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Complications
• Arthrodesis
• Motion preservation
• Corpectomy
• Expanded indications
• Biomechanics
• Anatomy

Before submission authors should carefully read over the journal's Author Guidelines, which are located at http://www.hindawi.com/journals/tswj/guidelines/. Prospective authors should submit an electronic copy of their complete manuscript through the journal Manuscript Tracking System at http://mts.hindawi.com/submit/journals/tswj/orthopedics/las/ according to the following timetable: