Pioneers, sceptics and those who seek the truth

VATS lobectomy is now 25 years old having started in 1992 and was taken up by many pioneers (1-4). The operation continued to evolve over this time and as the authors of this paper report (5), over 1,500 cohort papers that report the benefits of VATS lobectomy have now been published. However, after a quarter of a century, the rates of VATS lobectomy vary widely internationally but are often well below 50% in most countries.