Preface on Lung Cancer Management—The Next Decade

Abstract

The management of lung cancer has evolved very rapidly in the past decade. The introduction of targeted and immunotherapies have significantly improved outcomes especially in advanced stage disease (1), endobronchial technology to improve early diagnostic yields (2), robotic surgery to perform challenging surgery in more precise manner (3), and liquid biopsies to diagnose and guide treatments. However, these past great leaps in lung cancer management, as Sir Winston Churchill once said, “… is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is perhaps, the end of the beginning.” In this special series of “Lung Cancer Management—The Next Decade”, we have invited some of the top clinician scientists in the field, many of them pioneers and trailblazers in their topics, to provide us with their unique perspectives. The articles cover the latest developments in: (I) the use of circulating tumour DNA and the potentials it holds [Lam et al. (4)]; (II) the current and future technologies of using robotic bronchoscopy [Ho et al. (5)] and cone beam computed tomography (CT) scan for accurate tissue biopsy acquisition [Verhoeven et al. (6)]; (III) the state of the art in non-invasive and minimally invasive surgical approaches to treat lung cancer by transbronchial ablation therapies [Chan et al. (7)] and uniportal robotic surgery [Gonzalez-Rivas et al. (8)]; (IV) the current use of targeted therapy with preview to how it might change in the next decade [Li et al. (9)]; and (V) other technologies such as artificial intelligence [Bardoni et al. (10)] and 3D printing [Aravena et al. (11)] that could revolutionize how lung cancer is managed. We hope you will enjoy reading this special series, where leading clinician scientists dare to push the boundaries and dream of what might become standard care in their own sub-specialty or area of research interest in the next golden decade. Calvin S. H. Ng Supplementary The article’s supplementary files as 10.21037/atm-2024-01