Actually, there are no valid epidemiologic data concerning intervertebral disk surgery available for Germany. Using resources of official statistical information we estimated the incidence of inpatient and outpatient disk surgery in Germany during last 6 years: The incidence for degenerative intervertebral disk surgery in Germany is about 87 operations per 100,000 inhabitants and year. There is no significant increase in the last five years, but there is a tendency to more outpatient disk surgery. Presently 16% of disk surgery is done in a outpatient procedure. Comparing with other European countries there are similar frequencies of disk surgery, contradictory in the United States there was a huge increase of the incidence for disk surgery since 1980.