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Review
. 2022 Aug;14(8):3083-3090.
doi: 10.21037/jtd-21-1809.

Thoracic surgery in Brazil: an overview

Fernando Vannucci  1   2 , Caio César Bianchi de Castro  3   4
Affiliations
Review

Thoracic surgery in Brazil: an overview

Fernando Vannucci et al. J Thorac Dis. 2022 Aug.

Abstract

Brazil is an emerging country with continental proportions, being one of the largest in the world. As big as its territory, are the complexities and singularities within it. Brazilian thoracic surgery reflects the picture of this unique giant, with all its virtues and problems. This peculiar framework of thoracic surgery in Brazil unfolds that the surgeons are usually well trained and can perform this specialty with technical and scientific excellence, making the country to play a true major role in Latin American thoracic surgery. Nevertheless, the chronic social imbalance present in every aspect of the Brazilian daily life hampers this ultra-specialized workforce to be equally and universally available for every citizen, in every corner of the country. Lung transplantation and minimally invasive approaches (including robotics) are performed by many surgeons with good results, comparable to those observed in high-income countries from North America, Europe and Asia. However, these procedures are still performed more often in centers of academic excellence, located at the main cities of the country, which also reflects an unequal access to these approaches within the Brazilian territory. The aim of this paper is to present a broad overview of the practice of general thoracic surgery in Brazil, as well as its main idiosyncrasies.

Keywords: Brazil; Brazilian society; Thoracic surgery; demographics; healthcare system; lung cancer; lung transplantation; medical residency program; robotic surgery; video-assisted thoracic surgery (VATS).

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflicts of Interest: Both authors have completed the ICMJE uniform disclosure form (available at https://jtd.amegroups.com/article/view/10.21037/jtd-21-1809/coif). The series “Thoracic Surgery Worldwide” was commissioned by the editorial office without any funding or sponsorship. FV reports that he received 2 presentation honorariums from AstraZeneca Brazil, and he was the Former International Secretary for international affairs of Brazilian Society of Thoracic Surgery. The authors have no other conflicts of interest to declare.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Degree of access to various exams in the public healthcare system by city size (population). Extracted after copyright holder permission from Tsukazan et al. (6). CT, computed tomography; PET, positron emission tomography; VATS, video-assisted thoracic surgery.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Degree of access to exams according to patient insurance (public healthcare system versus private healthcare system). Extracted after copyright holder permission from Tsukazan et al. (6). CT, computed tomography; PET, positron emission tomography; VATS, video-assisted thoracic surgery.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Percentage of each surgical approach for lobectomies performed for lung cancer at the collaborating institutions that take part of the SBCT national database from 2015 to 2020 (11). Extracted after copyright holder permission from Tzukazan et al. (11). VATS, video-assisted thoracic surgery; RATS, robotic-assisted thoracic surgery.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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