Surgery of Spinal Tumors

The request from Professor Jörg Klekamp for me to write the foreword for this monograph was an appealing challenge. Prior to the era of microneu- surgery, I was firmly involved in the surgery of spinal lesions, and achieved surgical removal of spinal arteriovenous malformations (AVMs) on 12 - tients in the years between 1960 and 1965. Microneurosurgical techniques were introduced in Zurich in 1962, and since then I have applied these techniques to the exploration of the various spinal lesions: 1