Prof. Daniel S. J. Choy

PLDD (Percutaneous Laser Disc Decompression) was developed in the mid-1980s by Prof. Daniel S. J. Choy, now Emeritus Professor of Medicine at Columbia University in New York.

The first “in vivo” PLDD case was performed in February 1986 at the Department of Neurosurgery of the University of Graz (Austria) by Prof. Choy together with Prof. Peter Ascher (then Head of the Department).

After five years of studies and evaluation, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved PLDD in 1991.

Since then, it is estimated that over 150,000 PLDD procedures have been performed worldwide. PLDD was first introduced in Europe in 1991 by Dr. Johannes Hellinger (Munich, Germany).

PLDD procedure

To date, more than one hundred thousand PLDD procedures have been successfully performed worldwide, and a broad body of scientific literature on PLDD has appeared in international journals, including The New England Journal of Medicine, Spine, Neurosurgery, Clinical Orthopedics and Related Research, Neurology India, and The Journal of Clinical Lasers in Medicine and Surgery (now Photomedicine and Laser Surgery).

Among the physicians trained directly by Prof. Choy at the Laser Spine Center in Manhattan (New York) was Dr. Rezaiamiri, described as his last trainee.