When doctors talk about thoracic conditions, they generally mean conditions affecting the lungs, esophagus (muscular tube that connects your throat to your stomach), trachea (windpipe), ribs and breastbone, connective muscles and tissues, and membranes that line your chest cavity and protect your organs. While the chest also contains your heart, conditions of the heart are most often talked about as cardiac or cardiovascular conditions.

Thoracic conditions that require medical care include cancer found in any area of the chest, gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), lung diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), benign tumors, trauma-related injuries, hernias in this region, and others. In the case of cancer or when lifestyle changes, medicine, and other options do not ease symptoms of other conditions, your doctor may suggest surgery.

In the past, doctors only performed open surgery, which required a long incision in the chest skin and muscles. Open chest surgeries also often required surgeons to separate the ribs, crack the breastbone, or remove a rib to allow the surgeon to see and work on the area of concern. Today, surgeons can perform many procedures using minimally invasive video-assisted thoracoscopic or robotic-assisted surgery, possibly with da Vinci.

Both minimally invasive surgical approaches require only a few small incisions that doctors use to insert surgical equipment and a camera for viewing. In video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery, doctors use special long-handled tools to perform surgery while viewing magnified images from the videoscope (camera) on a video screen. [1]

Learn more about what robotic assisted surgery is and how surgeons use the technology here.