Foreword for the new section “Troubleshooting VATS: Tips and Tricks”

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to introduce a special section in the VATS Journal. This section entitled “Troubleshooting VATS: Tips and Tricks” hopes to highlight a common method of surgical teaching and learning.

In meetings, it is common for surgeons to discuss a difficult situation that they encountered only to find that other colleagues have found themselves in the same situation and have developed workarounds to solve the problem. These issues may be as seemingly insignificant as appropriate port placement for a tumor in an unusual location to dealing with significant bleeding from the pulmonary artery. Often, these solutions are difficult to publish short of waiting for a large series to evolve. Some of these situations are rare enough to never develop into a large series. However, the importance of disseminating these potential solutions lies in the rarity of the times that the problem is encountered.

This special section is devoted to the publication and discussion of such issues in the conduct of either simple or complex video assisted or robot assisted surgeries. We hope that the thoracic surgical community will embrace this opportunity to share their collective wisdom and experience.

Regards,

Acknowledgments

Funding: None.

Footnote

Provenance and Peer Review: This article was commissioned by the editorial office, Video-Assisted Thoracic Surgery. The article did not undergo external peer review.

Conflicts of Interest: All authors have completed the ICMJE uniform disclosure form (available at http://dx.doi.org/10.21037/vats.2017.03.06). SY serves as an unpaid editorial board member of Video-Assisted Thoracic Surgery from Mar 2017 to May 2019 and the unpaid Guest Editor of the special series "Troubleshooting VATS: tips and tricks". The series “Troubleshooting VATS: tips and tricks” was commissioned by the editorial office without any funding or sponsorship. LL serves as the Editor-in-Chief of Video-Assisted Thoracic Surgery. MWO serves as the Editor-in-Chief of Video-Assisted Thoracic Surgery.

Ethical Statement: The authors are accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

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