Objectives:To compare the early curative effect of visualization of percutaneous transforaminal endoscopic discectomy(VPTED) and microendoscopic discectomy (MED) in the treatment of lumbar spinal stenosis.Methods:49 patients with single segmental lumbar spinal stenosis combined with lumbar disc herniation(LDH) were treated in our hospital from March 2016 to March 2017.Among them,21 cases accepted VPTED,and 28 cases underwent MED.The length of incision,amount of bleeding during operation,operation time,length of hospital stay and the cost of hospitalization were recorded in the both groups.Visual analogue scale(VAS) was used to evaluate the effect of surgery,Oswestry disability index(ODI) was used to evaluate the clinical efficacy.The modified MacNab criteria were used to evaluate the efficacy of the patients at final follow-up.Results:There were no statistical differences among the age,the ratio of male to female,follow-up time,low back pain,weakness,sensory disturbance,general reflexes and prominent segments(P＞0.05).There were statistically significant differences between the two groups in preoperative and postoperative VAS and ODI scores(P＜0.05).There was no significant difference in VAS or ODI score between groups at the same time (P＞0.05).The length of incision(0.78±0.06cm vs 1.95±0.12cm),the amount of intraoperative perspective(15.86± 2.66 vs 2.18±0.38) and the operation time(87.51±30.46min vs 47.53±13.61min) had significant difference between VPTED and MED group(P＜0.05).There was no significant difference in hospitalization time or hospitalization expenses between the two groups(P＞0.05).At final follow-up,based on the MacNab standard,it was excellent in 17 cases,good in 3 cases,fair in 1 case in VPTED group;it was excellent in 22 cases,good in 4 cases,fair in 2 cases in MED group.Excellent rate of the VPTED group was 95.24％,and that was 92.86％ in the MED group,there was no significant difference between the two groups(P＞0.05).Conclusions:Visualization of percutaneous transforaminal endoscopic discectomy (VPTED) and microendoscopic discectomy (MED) in the treatment of lumbar spinal stenosis have good short-term curative effect,it iproves that VPTED is a safe and effective minimally invasive surgery.