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Ongoing technologic and therapeutic advancements in medicine are now testing the limits of conventional anatomic imaging techniques. The ability to image physiology, rather than simply anatomy, is critical in the management of multiple disease processes, especially in oncology. Nuclear medicine has assumed a leading role in detecting, diagnosing, staging and assessing treatment response of various pathologic entities, and appears well positioned to do so into the future. When combined with computed tomography (CT) or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), positron emission tomography (PET) has become the sine quo non technique of evaluating most solid tumors especially in the thorax. PET/CT serves as a key imaging modality in the initial evaluation of pulmonary nodules, often obviating the need for more invasive testing. PET/CT is essential to staging and restaging in bronchogenic carcinoma and offers key physiologic information with regard to treatment response. A more recent development, PET/MRI, shows promise in several specific lung cancer applications as well. Additional recent advancements in the field have allowed PET to expand beyond imaging with 18F-flurodeoxyglucose (FDG) alone, now with the ability to specifically image certain types of cell surface receptors. In the thorax this predominantly includes 68Ga-DOTATATE which targets the somatostatin receptors abundantly expressed in neuroendocrine tumors, including bronchial carcinoid. This receptor targeted imaging technique permits targeting these tumors with therapeutic analogues such as 177Lu labeled DOTATATE. Overall, the proper utilization of PET in the thorax has the ability to directly impact and improve patient care.Lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer death in the United States. Screening with low-dose computed tomography (LDCT) has been proven to aid in early detection of lung cancer and reduce disease specific mortality. In 2014, the American College of Radiology (ACR) released version 1.0 of the Lung CT Screening Reporting and Data System (Lung-RADS) as a quality tool to standardize the reporting of lung cancer screening LDCT. In 2019, 5 years after the implementation of Lung-RADS version 1.0 the ACR released the updated Lung-RADS version 1.1 which incorporates initial experience with lung cancer screening. In this review, we outline the implications of the changes and additions in Lung-RADS version 1.1 and examine relevant literature for many of the updates. We also highlight several challenges and opportunities as Lung-RADS version 1.1 is implemented in lung cancer screening programs.Lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer related death world-wide despite advances in treatment. This largely relates to the fact that many of these patients already have advanced diseases at the time of initial diagnosis. As most lung cancers present as nodules initially, an accurate classification of pulmonary nodules as early lung cancers is critical to reducing lung cancer morbidity and mortality. There have been significant recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) for lung nodule evaluation. Deep learning (DL) and convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have shown promising results in pulmonary nodule detection and have also excelled in segmentation and classification of pulmonary nodules. selleck compound This review aims to provide an overview of progress that has been made in AI recently for pulmonary nodule detection and characterization with the ultimate goal of lung cancer prediction and classification while outlining some of the pitfalls and challenges that remain to bring such advancements to routine clinical use.Quality outcomes are the ultimate goal for our thoracic surgery patients. The collection of data to measure the outcomes have been in place for many years and yet are insufficient. The inclusion of patient reported outcomes (PROs) into data reporting, collection and analysis will help to truly understand what matters most to patients and allow us to provide value-based care every time. It is the responsibility of the healthcare system to provide the resources in order to leverage the patient voice and collect meaningful PROs that can influence the best outcomes possible.Patient-centered care is a growing focus of research and modern surgical practice. To this end, there has been an ever-increasing utilization of patient reported outcomes (PRO) and health-related quality of life metrics (HR-QOL) in thoracic surgery research. Here we describe reasons and methods for integration of PRO measurement into routine thoracic surgical practice, commonly utilized PRO measurement instruments, and several examples of successful integration.Curative-intent surgery is the treatment of choice for thoracic malignancies, including lung cancer. There is significant complexity and uncertainty associated with the diagnosis, prognosis, and surgical treatment decision-making in thoracic surgery. From a patient point of view, this complexity and uncertainty can be overwhelming. Therefore, for high-quality cancer care, an emphasis on patient-centered care-including the improvement in quality of life (QOL) through symptom and functional monitoring-is essential. Using the current literature and our previous research, the purpose of this paper is to (I) review the current evidence on symptom and functional monitoring in surgery; (II) describe strategies to monitor symptoms and functional recovery in surgery; and (III) describe a model of patient-centered care in thoracic surgery.Tracheobronchomalacia (TBM) is an obstructive airway disease characterized by laxity and redundancy of the posterior membrane of the main airways leading to dynamic airway collapse during exhalation. The gold standard for diagnosis is dynamic computed tomography (DCT) scan and dynamic flexible bronchoscopy (DFB). Patients with complete or near-complete collapse (>90% reduction in cross-sectional area) of the airway are possible candidates for surgical management. Central airway stabilization by tracheobronchoplasty (TBP) effectively corrects malacic airways and has demonstrated significant improvement in objective functional measures, which is often but not uniformly accompanied by equal improvement in health-related quality of life (HRQOL) metrics. This article reviews HRQOL instruments used to report outcomes after TBM surgery.