Objective To study the efficacy and complications of percutaneous endoscopic lumbar discectomy for the treatment of lumbar disc herniation. Methods : from September 2011 to October 2012, 83 patients received invalid conservative treatment or recurrent single segmental lumbar disc herniation performed by the same physician, including L4/5 52 cases, L5/S1 31cases, containment 42 cases and non- containment 19 cases. The limb pain visual analog scale (VAS), Oswestry Disability Index function (ODI) and modified MacNab criteria were observed at the time of the preoperative and post-operative first day and last follow-up to assess the clinical efficacy. Results 83 cases were followed up for 8 to 15 months, the VAS of the post-operative first day and the last follow-up were (10.3?2.1) and (9.6?1.4) respectively, which were significantly lower than the preoperative (75.8?2.3) (P<0.01), the last follow-up ODI index was (10.4?2.0)%, lower than the preoperative (68.8?14.6)% (P=0.004). According to the modified Macnab criteria: the therapeutic outcome was excellent in 61 cases, good in 6 cases, fair in 5 cases, and poor in 11 cases. 10 cases of postoperative recurrence (12%) and 6 cases with secondary open TLIF; 1 case of cerebrospinal fluid leakage, healed after pressure bandaging.Conclusions The PETD is of mini-invasive, safe and effective.However,the surgeon should take full account of the intra-operative and post-operative complications and influencing factors before operation.