Pushing the Boundaries: Strategies to Increase Resectability in High Risk Lung Cancer patients

In lung cancer, surgical resection remains the primary curative treatment, particularly for early-stage Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer (NSCLC). To augment these resections—meaning to increase the number of eligible patients and improve their surgical outcomes—current strategies focus on moving beyond traditional lobectomy toward more precise, less invasive, and biologically informed interventions. In specific patient groups who are perceived as higher risk than usual, these strategies are unexplored.Strategies to augment resection in high risk lung cancer patients focus on increasing the number of such high risk eligible patients, improving surgical precision, and enhancing long-term survival through integrated therapies.We welcome submissions related to:1. Neoadjuvant Therapy: Administering immunotherapy or chemotherapy before surgery in special groups and high risk patients can shrink tumours (downstaging) and eliminate micrometastases, converting previously inoperable cases into resectable ones.2. Minimally Invasive Techniques: Using Video-Assisted Thoracic Surgery (VATS) and Robotic-Assisted Thoracic Surgery (RATS) to reduce surgical trauma, allowing elderly or high-risk patients to undergo curative resection.3. Sublobar Resection: Avoiding entire lobe (lobectomy) resection can be as effective for small, early-stage tumours while preserving more lung tissue, event especially important in high risk patients.4. Advanced Navigation & Imaging: Technologies like 3D reconstruction, Augmented Reality (AR), and Indocyanine Green (ICG) fluorescence, targeted biopsies help surgeons identify precise tumour boundaries and complex vascular anatomy in real-time and accurate diagnosis.5. Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS): Implementing standardised perioperative protocols to reduce complications and hospital stays, thereby allowing patients to start necessary adjuvant treatments sooner.6. Drawing from the lung cancer screening programs, emphysema patients with cancer can be treated with curative intent.Please note: manuscripts consisting solely of bioinformatics, computational analysis, or predictions of public databases which are not accompanied by validation (independent clinical or patient cohort, or biological validation in vitro or in vivo, which are not based on public databases) are not suitable for publication in this journal.Dr. Vasileios Kouritas declares they are a proctor for Intuitive and Medical consultant for PulmonX. Topic editors: Vasileios Kouritas, Virginia Litle, Monica Casiraghi Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/78349/pushing-the-boundaries-strategies-to-increase-resectability-in-high-risk-lung-cancer-patients