The ESTS Annual Meeting represents the occasion for all ESTS members to gather and to meet colleagues from all over the world, to create long-lasting professional relationships, to strengthen friendships, and to share and exchange different experiences and opinions. This selected topics of special issue was mainly driven by the intent to cover most of the aspects that makes up the mission of ESTS and we therefore came up with a choice of reports, which include the following: (I) the importance of the participation to the ESTS database, a major collaborative effort within the society, open to all interested ESTS members; (II) a report providing useful information about the opportunities of international training and certification for trainees; (III) an up-to-date of the highest technological achievement in our specialty, robotics; (IV) contributions focusing on the quality of life and safety of thoracic surgical patients, through the development of a nurse-led program for patients submitted to surgery for lung cancer and the assessment of the patients’ quality of life and safety in the perioperative period.
