During a meeting with Adam Schreiber from Switzerland, Mario Brock from the University of Berlin and J.A.N. Shepperd from the UK, a desire to establish an international society dedicated to the research and teaching of the emerging technology was expressed. Dr. Hijikata from Toden Hospital, Japan, had described the removal of nuclear tissue from the intervertebral disc (nucleotomy) for the treatment of herniated discs in 1975.

Professor Schreiber adopted the above technique and utilized this procedure in his practice.

Parviz Kambin resisted the term of nucleotomy in the title of the newly formed society. He believed that the dislodged herniated disc fragments should be accessed and removed. Kambin was elected the first President of the newly organized society. He coined the term Minimal Intervention in Spinal Surgery by registering the Society as a nonprofit organization dedicated to education and research in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The name of International Society for Minimal Intervention in Spinal Surgery (ISMISS) was established on April 10, 1990.

His first textbook, entitled Arthroscopic Microdiscectomy, Minimal Intervention in Spinal Surgery, was published in 1991. The Society was formed under the auspices of the Société Internationale de Chirurgie Orthopédique et de Traumatologie (International Society of Orthopaedic Surgery and Traumatology).