VATS special issue dedicated to the 4th International VATS Symposium

Professor Crisci and I have the great pleasure to introduce you to this special issue. It has been authored by prominent surgeons and it summarise all the topics discussed during the 4th International VATS Symposium in London. The articles cover the principles of enhanced recovery, technical VATS and robotic aspects with debate about the advantages of the robot over vats. The idea behind the course has always been through the years to provide an informal platform for surgeons and friends to exchange ideas, confront on techniques and, ultimately, improve outcomes for our patients. We felt that the meeting would have benefit from a more structured approach to the topics and that is the reason for this publication. All the topics exposed during the course are covered in details and will provide the readers a greater inside into the latest techniques and preoperative management. We would welcome your comments.

We hope you will find this issue stimulating and will contribute to the discussion.

Acknowledgments

Funding: None.

Footnote

Provenance and Peer Review: This article was commissioned by the editorial office, Video-Assisted Thoracic Surgery for the series “VATS Special Issue dedicated to the 4th international VATS Symposium 2017”. The article did not undergo external peer review.

Conflicts of Interest: Both authors have completed the ICMJE uniform disclosure form (available at http://dx.doi.org/10.21037/vats.2017.09.07). The series “VATS Special Issue dedicated to the 4th international VATS Symposium 2017” was commissioned by the editorial office without any funding or sponsorship. MS served as the unpaid Guest Editor of the series and serves as an unpaid editorial board member of Video-Assisted Thoracic Surgery from Mar 2017 to May 2019. RC served as the unpaid Guest Editor of the series. The authors have no other conflicts of interest to declare.

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.

Open Access Statement: This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which permits the non-commercial replication and distribution of the article with the strict proviso that no changes or edits are made and the original work is properly cited (including links to both the formal publication through the relevant DOI and the license). See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.

Marco Scarci

Roberto Crisci