Thoracic surgery and lung transplantation: Thoracic Surgery Assembly contribution to the celebration of 20 years of the ERS.

When two pre-existing European respiratory societies (the Societas Europaea Physiologiae Clinicae Respoiratoriae (SEPCR) and the European Society of Pneumology (SEP)) merged 20 years ago to form the European Respiratory Society (ERS) 1, the Thoracic Surgery Assembly was established within the new Society. The foundation of our Assembly was the result of founder pneumologists’ and thoracic surgeons’ conviction of the need for collaboration between these two medical specialties. Such collaboration occurs in everyday work and, indeed, our community is enriched when our efforts are combined to form a wider spectrum of scientific knowledge 2. In preparation for this Editorial, we conducted an informal survey of colleagues from different countries and from teaching, research and clinical backgrounds in thoracic surgery, and asked them how the specialty is considered, taught and organised in their country. We asked about training in thoracic surgery (whether there is a specific training programme, whether training is provided after general surgery or combined with cardiac surgery, and how trainees can enter residency programmes), working in the specialty at a professional level (time taken to gain a position after the residency period, excess or lack of specialists, and possible conflict with other surgical specialties), and finally about national and European scientific societies (whether they are only for general thoracic surgeons or shared with other specialties like pneumology, general surgery or cardiac surgery). As a result of our colleagues’ responses, we can separate thoracic surgery in Europe into three different categories: Northern Europe (including Scandinavia, Germany, the UK and France); Eastern Europe (Russia and the Newly Independent States); Southern Europe (including Spain, Italy, Serbia and Greece). Each category has distinct features in terms of training, performance and collaboration in thoracic surgery, as follows. Northern Europe: In Northern Europe, training in thoracic surgery is combined with cardiac surgery (with …