Thoracic Surgery

The field of cardiothoracic and vascular surgery encompasses three major disciplines—cardiac, general thoracic and vascular surgery. In the early stages of evolution, these three fields were practiced by the same individuals. This is the case even now in several practice settings all over the world. However, maturity in the development of each discipline led to sub-specialization and specific training programs, clinical product lines and academic departments, not necessarily in that order. The last 50 years have seen that happen, particularly to general thoracic surgery, in North America and Europe. This sub-specialization has led to focused research and clinical innovation which in turn has led to significant improvement in patient outcomes. Cardiothoracic surgery departments in India started out in a similar fashion, but over the last three decades have become cardiac surgery departments with little emphasis on and clinical activity in general thoracic surgery. In contradiction to this trend, the burden of thoracic diseases has continued to increase. This article documents the need for the emergence of general thoracic surgery in India as a distinct surgical specialty and the challenges and the opportunities for such an evolution. This information can be published in our peer-reviewed journal with impact factors and are calculated using citations not only from research articles but also review articles (which tend to receive more citations), editorials, letters, meeting abstracts, short communications, and case reports. The inclusion of these publications provides the opportunity for editors and publishers to manipulate the ratio used to calculate the impact factor and try to increase their number rapidly. Impact factor plays a major role for the particular journal. Journal with higher impact factor is considered to be more important than other ones.