Innovations in Thoracic Surgery and Medicine: Advancements and Challenges

Dear Colleagues,

Topic background and history:

The evolution of medicine in recent years has been strongly linked to technological evolution, which has allowed the development of medical devices and surgical instruments capable of improving the patients’ quality of life in the daily management of chronic diseases, such as diabetes, incontinence or cardiovascular pathologies, and of making surgery less invasive with video-assisted surgery and robotics, which also guarantees more complex interventions with shorter recovery times.

We can now foresee new scenarios in which robotic surgery will have more accessible costs and will become the ideal interface for the entry of Artificial Intelligence into the surgical field. From this perspective, professional training is essential to control and exploit all the potential that technological innovation represents, thus improving the benefit of patients.

Aim and scope of the Special Issue:

This Special Issue aims to understand what could happen in future years, attempting to foresee the trends for innovative technologies and future surgical treatments.

We also seek to understand how technology could improve MDT, preoperative studies, anesthesia, postoperative rehabilitation, palliation and follow-up.

Furthermore, we ask the question of Artificial Intelligences’ role. 

Cutting-edge research:

• What does innovation mean today?
  Innovation means accessibility to the most innovative technologies for the greatest number of patients, the optimization of clinical results in terms of outcome, expectancy and quality of life and the ability to reconcile expenses with the effectiveness of treatments. In the surgical field, these factors demand minimally invasive interventions that guarantee conservative procedures, fewer post-operative complications and reduced recovery times, as well as a revolution that allows us to treat even fragile patients for whom a traditional, so-called open surgery could involve very high risks. In the clinical approach, however, medical devices capable of meeting the physical and psychological needs of patients, like augmented reality or 3D reconstruction planning tools, are significant innovations. These innovations also allow us to review the concept of prevention, and a non-invasive investigation ensures many more people are screened for oncological diseases. It is, therefore, important that research is increasingly oriented towards precision medicine that makes use of all the tools necessary to improve treatment paths and the quality of life of patients, combining concerns regarding the sustainability of the health system—at a time when the spending review calls for a review of the distribution of funds—and accessibility to innovations for all patients.
• What kind of papers we are soliciting?
  We are soliciting clinical trial reports or projects, study designs, case series, technical “how-to-do-it” articles, case perspectives, narrative and systematic reviews and expert commentaries.

Dr. Paolo Scanagatta
Guest Editor

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• thoracic medicine
• thoracic surgery
• lung cancer
• artificial intelligence (AI)
• VATS
• thoracic anesthesia
• innovations