Chest wall trauma: a true challenge for thoracic surgeons

Chest trauma represents an important source of morbidity and mortality in the context of polytrauma. The complexity of the anatomy and pathophysiology of the chest require a high know—how along with a broad expertise in the field of thoracic and trauma surgery.

The lack of international consensus to the current state is the leading cause of the extreme variability of the chest wall trauma management and treatment worldwide.

We aim to provide with this focused issue a state of the art overview about chest wall trauma by leading experts who would like to share their knowledge disseminating it to the scientific community. Even if there are still controversial views in the literature, we would like to create a starting point for future discussions always keeping in mind the importance of multidisciplinarity in decision making process.

An international consensus should be reached in the near future in order to improve the outcomes of our patients.

Acknowledgments

Funding: None.

Footnote

Provenance and Peer Review: This article was commissioned by the editorial office, Journal of Visualized Surgery for the series “Chest Wall Traumas”. The article did not undergo external peer review.

Conflicts of Interest: Both authors have completed the ICMJE uniform disclosure form (available at https://jovs.amegroups.com/article/view/10.21037/jovs.2019.12.02/coif). The series “Chest Wall Traumas” was commissioned by the editorial office without any funding or sponsorship. FM served as the unpaid Guest Editor of the series. MS served as the unpaid Guest Editor of the series and serves as an unpaid editorial board member of Journal of Visualized Surgery from March 2019 to February 2021. 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/.

Fabrizio Minervini

Marco Scarci