Thoracic Surgery

Liaoning Provincial Clinical Key Specialty—The Thoracic Surgery Department of the First Affiliated Hospital of Dalian Medical University was one of the first thoracic surgery departments in China, founded in the early 1950s after the founding of New China by Professor Ye Xingjie and other medical scientists of the older generation. It has always been the center leading thoracic-surgery medical care, teaching and research in southern Liaoning; it is a National Health Commission standardized resident physician training base, a unit whose thoracic-surgery special committee of the National Health Commission Cross-Strait Medicine and Health Exchange Association has a national deputy chairmanship, and a dual-committee member unit of the Lung Cancer Group and Thoracoscopy Group of the Chinese Medical Association Society of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery. The department ward has 90 open beds, with 10 professors and associate professors, 1 doctoral supervisor and 8 master's supervisors. It has cumulatively trained more than 50 doctoral and master's students, and currently has 2 doctoral students and 13 master's students. In 2019, the department recorded more than 40,000 outpatient visits and more than 2,400 operations, ranking first in southern Liaoning, including more than 2,000 minimally invasive operations.

Since the 1950s, the Thoracic Surgery Department of the First Affiliated Hospital of Dalian Medical University has maintained a leading position in thoracic surgery in southern Liaoning and has long undertaken the diagnosis and treatment of difficult and critically ill thoracic-surgery patients in our city. In 2011, with approval from the Dalian municipal government and relying on our department, the Dalian Lung Cancer Diagnosis and Treatment Base was established; in 2018, also relying on our department, the China Thoracic Surgery Lung Cancer Alliance—Dalian Regional Pulmonary Nodule Diagnosis and Treatment Consultation Center was established. This further integrated advantageous medical resources from China and Liaoning Province around thoracic patients in our city, with the aim of providing the highest-quality diagnosis and treatment services. In addition to routinely performing high-difficulty thoracic operations such as radical lung-cancer resection, sleeve lobectomy, carina reconstruction, superior vena cava artificial-vessel replacement, three-incision surgery for esophageal cancer and colon interposition for the esophagus, the department is also fully advancing minimally invasive and precise surgical treatment of lung cancer. It routinely performs CT-guided preoperative Hook-wire localization of small pulmonary nodules, CT-guided needle-puncture microwave ablation of pulmonary nodules, electromagnetic-navigation bronchoscopy-guided biopsy or ablation of pulmonary nodules, and fourth-generation Da Vinci robotic radical surgery for lung cancer and mediastinal tumors. The degree of technological updating and number of operations both rank among the leading levels in Northeast China. At the same time, the department has professional groups for esophageal diseases and for thoracic trauma and mediastinal tumors, and its operation volume increases year by year.

As the teaching and research center for thoracic surgery in southern Liaoning, in 2014 our department was approved by the Dalian Municipal Development and Reform Commission to establish the Dalian Lung Cancer Tissue Gene Bank Engineering Laboratory, making it one of China's important clinical specimen databases for lung cancer. In the past five years, it successfully applied to host four national continuing medical education projects and hosted the National Study Course on New Technologies and New Progress in Lung Cancer Diagnosis and Treatment. It has conducted in-depth academic exchanges and broad cooperation with internationally renowned hospitals including Nippon Medical School and the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine, and has established long-term friendly cooperative relationships. These efforts have played an important role in improving the clinical technical level of thoracic-surgery reserve personnel and advancing basic research. In the past five years, the department has completed and continued work on 10 important national research projects, including National Natural Science Foundation projects. Since 2009, it has received two second prizes for provincial scientific and technological progress and one second prize for Liaoning medical science and technology; it has published 35 SCI-indexed papers and 18 papers in core journals, and has trained a large number of young, promising professionals in clinical care, teaching and research in thoracic surgery.