Preface
The European Society of Thoracic Surgeons (ESTS) was born in 1993 and since then the society has witnessed a continuous growth in terms of memberships, geographic distribution and educational activities, representing so far the largest general thoracic surgical society in the world. ESTS members are no longer confined to Europe, and they include representatives from all the continents, overcoming any geographical and political barrier with the sole intent to constitute a solid platform for the advancement and the development of the thoracic surgery.
The ESTS Annual Meeting represents the occasion for all ESTS members to gather and to meet colleagues from all over the world, to create long-lasting professional relationships, to strengthen friendships, and to share and exchange different experiences and opinions.
The 22nd ESTS Annual Meeting which took place in Copenhagen from 15 to 18 June 2014 reunited more than 1,200 delegates and provided a complete overview of the state-of-the-art of our discipline, including the first Nurse Symposium dedicated to thoracic surgical nursing and physiotherapist issues.
It was therefore with great enthusiasm that we accepted the invitation from the editorial board of the Journal of Thoracic Disease to collect a selection of the most representative contributions, which were presented at the Copenhagen conference and to edit this second edition of the European Perspectives in Thoracic Surgery.
Our selection was mainly driven by the intent to cover most of the aspects that makes up the mission of ESTS and we therefore came up with a choice of reports, which include the following: (I) the importance of the participation to the ESTS database, a major collaborative effort within the society, open to all interested ESTS members; (II) a report providing useful information about the opportunities of international training and certification for trainees; (III) an up-to-date of the highest technological achievement in our specialty, robotics; (IV) contributions focusing on the quality of life and safety of thoracic surgical patients, through the development of a nurse-led program for patients submitted to surgery for lung cancer and the assessment of the patients’ quality of life and safety in the perioperative period.
The selection of the present issue also includes important and challenging topics, from the relationship between surgical volume and quality of care, the recent promising developments of the lung cancer screening programs, to the rare although fascinating neuroendocrine lung tumors, and finally the minimally invasive techniques for the correction of thoracic deformities. All reports results from the experience of top-quality and world-renown experts in the field.
We are confident that the information collected in the present volume will be of interest to any professional working in the field of thoracic diseases. We are grateful to all the authors who contributed to the realization of the present selection.
This issue is dedicated to all women and men working in the field of thoracic surgery, surgeons, nurses, physiotherapists and allied health professionals who, with their daily commitment and devotion help promote and advance our specialty and can assure our patients a high quality of care, a better quality of life and an improved long-term survival.
