Essentials of thoracic surgery : textbook

Abstract

Thoracic surgery has gone a long way from the primitive procedures performed by barber-surgeons to modern-time operations; unfortunately, this road has not always been straight. For a long time, thoracic surgery has been a very extensive field of medicine, involving surgical diagnostics and treatment of the pathologies of all thoracic organs - including the heart. For this reason, the notion of cardiothoracic surgery has been introduced in the US and some other countries. The progress and increasing specialisation of medicine resulted in heart surgery (cardiac surgery) separating from the main branch of chest surgery around the middle of the 20th century. Since then, chest surgery has been called general thoracic surgery to emphasise its object - i.e. all thoracic organs except for the heart and the aorta. However, general thoracic surgery and cardiac surgery remain closely related - and not only because they share the same object of activity, i.e. the chest. Both thoracic and cardiac surgeons have to know the pathology and the treatment techniques of the organs located adjacent to their main object of activity. This is especially relevant in cases of chest trauma or malignant tumours - e.g. when performing extended operations. The surgical process would be impossible without high-quality studies of medicine. Textbooks - in the form of traditional or electronic books - remain the principal means for studies. The contents of this textbook significantly exceeds the scope of the part of the integrated study programme in Medicine dedicated to thoracic surger, and therefore this textbook will also be useful for resident physicians of surgical specialities. [...].