“New Beginning of JMISST as an International Journal with MISSAB” and the First Publication of the “Special Issues Section”

JMISST, the official journal of KOMISS, which has been the center of the development of clinical patient care, surgical techniques, and research on minimally invasive spinal surgery around the world, published its first issue in September 2016 under the leadership of the first editor-in-chief, Sang Gu Lee. As the world's only journal specializing in minimally invasive spinal surgery and research, it covers researches on various topics related to minimally invasive spinal surgery and provides an open access journal to spinal surgeons around the world through website and mobile application contributing to the development of related academics. Along with these efforts, the MISSAB Society of India, which also has been a great influence on minimally invasive spine society, has decided to participate and launch a joint official journal, taking its first step as an international journal from this issue. We would like to thank the President and the members of MISSAB for their willingness to participate as a member of JMISST, and hope that this will be a great opportunity for us to grow together. In addition, these growth were possible because of the former and current executives and all members of KOMISS, who have participated in the creation and development of JMISST and editors, reviewers and authors who have contributed valuable research to JMISST. From now on, all members of KOMISS and MISSAB should work together to improve the quality and quantity of JMISST to raise the status of the world's only professional academic journal in MISS. Through this, I hope that JMISST will become the leading international academic journal specializing in MISS in the future.

Furthermore, this issue is significant in that we have included a “Special Issues Section” for the first time. This “Special Issues Section” selects one topic of increasing interest or importance within the field of MISS, and provide articles on a an in-depth summary of the fundamentals, clinical research and surgical techniques from various perspectives. The first topic of the special issue is “Uniportal and Biportal Endoscopic Spine Surgery: A New Paradigm in Spine Surgery”. The papers at the beginning of the section describes the history of the advancement of spinal endoscopy that has led to the development of the present Uniportal and Biportal Endoscopic Surgery and describes the fundamental background of the socio-economic needs and justification for the development of spinal endoscopy. In addition, the section describes indications for the two surgical methods and includes introduction and comparison of each surgical method for simple decompression and MISS fusion. Lastly, limitations in the current situation, the future directions on development and the predictions from experts are included. I am deeply grateful to editors, Hyeun Sung Kim and Dong Hwa Heo, for the great effort in planning, conducting, and selecting authors and writing the thesis for the first “Special Issues Section”. In addition, we would like to thank all the authors for writing in-depth contents and the reviewers for meticulous manuscript review. We hope that this start will continue and develop in the next issue and hope that important issues related to MISS will continue to be discussed in the future. Once again, we appreciate your support and contribution.

Thank you.